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Steve Davis

Davis dropped out of the top 16 for the first time since 2003, having found positive results hard to come by during the 2007/08 season.
He reached the last 16 of just three of the campaign’s seven ranking events, losing his opening match in the other four. That added up to a drop of 14 places on the official list to No 29.
Davis’ season finished at the 888.com World Snooker Championship when he lost 10-8 to Stuart Bingham despite coming from 8-3 down to 8-8. “I’ve played pretty poorly this season, those five frames from 8-3 are probably the best snooker I’ve played,” he said. “Thinking about it, I’ve played some crud. But I’ll take some solace from that match. So I shall look forward to next season as a challenge against good players.”
The previous year, Davis achieved his ambition of retaining his official top 16 place when he turned 50.
The Nugget reached his half century in August 2007 and, with players in their early to mid-20s increasingly dominating snooker, his achievement in remaining among the elite must be highly commended.
Davis achieved a remarkable milestone at the 2005 UK Championship by reaching his 100th major final.
After knocking out  Mark Allen, Stephen Maguire, Ken Doherty and Stephen Hendry, his run was finally ended by Chinese whizzkid Ding Junhui who triumphed 10-6.
"I would like to have gone one step further," said the snooker legend. "But I’ve had a great week. I didn’t make the most of my scoring opportunities in the final and on the day Ding was stronger."
His previous major final was at the 2004 Welsh Open when he led Ronnie O’Sullivan 8-5 only to lose 9-8. The Rocket was his victim when Davis won his last major title – the 1997 Masters when he took the last six frames of the final at Wembley to win 10-8.
Emerging in the early days of snooker’s development as a major television sport, Davis came to dominate the green baize throughout the 1980s. He won his first world title in 1981 when he beat Doug Mountjoy 18-12 in the final and his sixth in 1989 with a record 18-3 thrashing of Parrott.
Perhaps more famous than Davis’ victories, though, were his two defeats in the Crucible final. In 1985 he lost 18-17 on the final black at 12.20am to Dennis Taylor in one of the most memorable occasions in all of sport, watched by 18.5 million BBC2 viewers. "It’s all there in black and white," Davis observed with typical deadpan humour. The following year he went down 18-12 to rank outsider Joe Johnson.
The man nicknamed the Ginger Magician recorded snooker’s first televised maximum 147 at the 1982 Lada Classic and received a Lada car for his troubles. He has won 28 ranking titles in all. He was made an MBE in 1988 and an OBE in The Queen’s New Year Honours in 2001.
Father-of-two Davis is a keen poker player, having become a regular competitor in the annual World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas. He loves collecting and listening to soul and prog rock music and once hosted a radio show called Interesting Soul. He is also an accomplished chess player and a former president of the British Chess Federation.

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