If you can't play ... COMMENTATE!! (Steve Davis)

Member Name: charliebrown

Product:	Steve Davis
Date:	03/05/01 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: THE player of the 80s, the first dominator of the game

Disadvantages: Retired from snooker, women shall never see his bottom again!

Steve Davies - 6 times world champion and absolute snooker king of the 80s! He can't play anymore, but boy can he commentate!

I used to enjoy watching Davies in the 80s when I was a young lad, my father being a keen watcher of snooker. There is no doubt that Davies was the king of modern snooker then, when the sport was just becoming accepted as a television sport. Lots of women apparently used to find him extremely attractive - with his tall thin demeanour, and the way he used to slide his cue back and forth between the dimple in his chin. Whatever turns them on!

The attraction of Davies was clearly that he was the young kid on the block in the 80s, and he took on what was largely a group of older established men who played slowly and drank lots of beer. That wasn't for Steve, he wanted to stay sober, sipping water and abstaining from the nicotine!

Instead he showed us what precision playing was, and his game concetrated on superb potting skills as well as impeccable safety. In contrast many of the other players at the time were scared of long potting, in case they missed, and so played safe instead.

Davies came to dominate the snooker scene in the 80s, and with his domination saw the rise in prize money and televised tournaments. If it wasn't for Davies, snooker probably wouldn't be dominated by the prize money on offer now.

Though he won many tournaments, his forte is clearly the World Snooker Championship, held at the Crucible in Sheffield. He has won this 6 times, only bettered in modern day snooker by Hendry. As well as those wins, he has been on the losing end of some great finals, against Joe Johnson and of course, Dennis Taylor (in 1985) - one of the most talked about snooker matches ever.

His winning streak ebbed in the 90s, and despite many come-backs where Davies started showing signs of his old form, he was never the dominant force in snooker that he was in the 80s, this mantle clearl
y had passed to Hendry.

This could be partly due to age, though probably has a lot more to do with the difficulty of keeping up motivation year after year, especially when you have already achieved so much. This is Hendry's problem now, of course.

Ironically, his decline is probably also partly due to his success, with many new players entering the scene, having been inspired by watching Davies in their youth. The standard of snooker and sheer number of good snooker players on the scene means that no one person can ever now dominate the sport like Hendry and Davies were able to do.

I'm delighted however that Davies has managed to find a new niche in television - playing the fool in programmes such as 'They Think It's All Over'. However, he is now commentating on games in the World Championship, and his vast knowledge is welcome and entertaining.

I look forward to many years of Davies wisdom to come!

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