Six-time snooker world champion Ray Reardon, who was nicknamed “Dracula” because of his bangs and prominent teeth, has died of cancer at the age of 91, his wife Carol confirmed.
Born in Tredegar, South Wales, Reardon dominated snooker in the 1970s, winning all six world titles in a nine-year period, including four consecutive titles between 1973 and 1976.
He last won the World Snooker Championship in 1978, just a year after the tournament moved to Sheffield’s famous Crucible Theatre for the first time, aged 45 years and 203 days, making him the oldest ever world champion at the time – a record only broken in 2022 by Reardon’s former coach Ronnie O’Sullivan.
Three-time world champion Mark Williams, who led the tributes, said: “Ray was one of the greatest sportsmen to come out of Wales and the greatest snooker player of all time.”
“A lot of us owe it to him to take up snooker. Along with Alex Higgins, Jimmy White and Steve Davis, he is the person who put snooker on the map. Anyone playing snooker today owes a lot to them for popularising the game. He’s a real inspiration.”
By the time snooker’s popularity exploded in the mid-1980s, the Welshman was a respected snooker stalwart. In 1982 he lost a memorable World Final at the Crucible to long-time rival Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, but that same year he defeated Jimmy White in the Professional Players Tournament final to become, at age 50, the oldest player to win a ranking event, a record that remains unbroken to this day.

He won two non-ranking tournaments, the Welsh Professional Championship and the International Masters in 1983, and retired from professional competition in 1991. He never made the largest break of 147 in tournament play, but he did make the even rarer break of 146.
Reardon’s first win Pot Black In 1969, when snooker suddenly began to be broadcast on colour television across Britain, he won tournaments and, when rankings were introduced for the 1976-77 season, he became the first player ever to be ranked number one in the world, a position he held for the next five years.
He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his services to snooker in 1985 and the Welsh Open trophy was renamed the Ray Reardon Trophy in his honour from the 2017 tournament onwards.
He lived in Devon in his later years, served as chairman of Churston Golf Club and, at the age of 91, achieved 100 strokes at his local club.

His impact on golf can also be measured by those he inspired. Steve Davis, the dominant force in the 1980s, watched Reardon play at Pontins in 1975 and incorporated elements of the then 43-year-old’s game into his own, including his short pause before hitting the cue ball, his overall approach to the shot and how he mimicked the way Reardon carried himself at the table and considered himself special.
Leading up to the 2004 World Championships, Reardon coached O’Sullivan, providing psychological and tactical advice, with a primary emphasis on safety play. “The Rocket” O’Sullivan beat Graham Dott 18-8 in the final that year to win his second world title and praised Reardon in his victory speech. The two maintained a warm relationship. “Ray Reardon brought a dimension to the game that I didn’t even know existed,” O’Sullivan later said, citing Reardon as one of the three most influential people in his career. “I learned that dimension and now I value it and use it a lot.”
Reardon was born in 1932 in the mining town of Tredegar, Monmouthshire, and was introduced to the cue sport by his uncle at the age of eight, initially concentrating on British billiards, but his talent for snooker became apparent. He News of the World He won the amateur title in 1949 and enjoyed many years of success as an amateur.
He initially worked as a miner at Ty Trist Colliery, wearing white gloves while digging to protect his hands while playing snooker, but later moved to Stoke, England, to become a police officer after being buried for three hours by a rockfall in 1960. He turned professional in 1967, aged 34, and won the inaugural tournament in 1969. Pot Black The tournament – a one-frame series of matches broadcast on the BBC – catapulted him to fame.

Reardon won the first of his six world titles in 1970, beating John Pullman 37-33 in the final, beginning a decade of snooker dominance that included a 27-16 victory over Higgins in the 1976 final. Gentlemanly, polite and steady, Reardon was a stark contrast to Higgins’s rough, wild and unreliable style on and off the table, giving their long-standing rivalry a fascinating personal twist. Higgins exacted revenge in the 1982 world final, leading to one of the most iconic moments in snooker history when the Northern Irishman invited his partner and baby daughter into the room to celebrate together by lifting the trophy.
Throughout his life, Reardon earned a good income on the lucrative snooker exhibition circuit and was a regular on British television screens during the 1970s and 1980s appearing on shows such as: This is your life, Parkinson’s, sports issue and Paul Daniels Magic Show. The latter film was the one that first earned him the nickname “Dracula,” which the mischievous Daniels came up with because of the Welshman’s dark hairline and sharp-toothed smile, and the genial Reardon liked it so much that he stuck with it for the rest of his career.
He married Sue, a porcelain painter, in 1959 and had two children with her, but divorced in 1986. Reardon left his wife in 1985 to live with Carol Covington. Daily Mirror Reporters said Sue was “fully informed” of her eight-year affair with Covington, whom she would marry in 1987.