1998 World Snooker Championship

The 1998 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1998 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 18 April and 4 May 1998 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.

John Higgins won his first World title by defeating defending champion Ken Doherty 18–12 in the final. Doherty became another World Champion who fell to the Crucible curse and could not defend his first World title. However, Doherty has come closer than any other first-time champion bar Joe Johnson to retaining his championship. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.

Prize fund

The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:

• Winner: £220,000
• Runner-up: £132,000
• Semi-final: £66,000
• Quarter-final: £33,000
• Last 16: £17,750
• Last 32: £12,000
• Highest break £19,000
• Maximum break £147,000
• Total £1,323,000

Summary

The defending champion Ken Doherty, who had won the 1997 Malta Grand Prix earlier that season, faced Lee Walker.

Stephen Hendry lost in the first round 4–10 to Jimmy White. It was the first time since his debut in 1986 that he lost in the last 32 and it was also the first quarter-final stage not to feature Hendry since 1988.

Simon Bedford, David Gray, Quinten Hann, Matthew Stevens, Terry Murphy, Alfie Burden, Peter Lines and Jason Prince made their Crucible debuts this year. Only Stevens could advance to the second round by defeating Alain Robidoux 10–8.

Stephen Hendry's eight-year run as the world number one ended and he was replaced by John Higgins.

Main draw

Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers).

Century breaks

There were 59 century breaks in the championship, a new record which would last until 2002. John Higgins' 14 centuries in the tournament was a new record, beating the 12 made by Stephen Hendry in 1995.

• 143, 139, 131, 130, 130, 128, 119, 118, 114, 111, 109, 104, 103, 102 John Higgins
• 143, 138, 118, 106 Jimmy White
• 141, 134, 118, 104, 100 Ronnie O'Sullivan
• 141 Peter Lines
• 140, 107 David Gray
• 137, 134, 131, 112 Ken Doherty
• 137 Dave Harold
• 137 James Wattana
• 133, 109 Stephen Lee
• 127, 100 Matthew Stevens

• 124, 117, 109, 108, 108, 104 Peter Ebdon
• 120, 108, 104, 102 John Parrott
• 115, 108, 102, 100 Anthony Hamilton
• 115, 105 Alfie Burden
• 112 Darren Morgan
• 111 Alan McManus
• 105, 100 Fergal O'Brien
• 103, 100 Mark King
• 102 Mark Williams

Qualifying

The qualifying matches were held between 2 January and March 1998 at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales.

Rounds 10–11

Results for the 10th and 11th qualifying rounds are shown below.

Round 11-12

Results for the 11th and 12th rounds of qualifying are shown below.

Round 13

Results for the 13th qualifying round are shown below.

Rounds 14–15

Results for the last two rounds of qualifying (14th and 15th) are shown below.

References

Books