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Neil Robertson

Neil Robertson’s success in the 2008/09 season is underlined by the fact that he started the campaign in 23rd place in the provisional rankings but finished it by moving up one place on the official list to No 9.
After a quiet start to the season, he registered an emphatic return to form by winning the Bahrain Snooker Championship, the first ranking event staged in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Robertson beat Marcus Campbell 5-4, Stephen Lee 5-2, Stephen Maguire 5-2 and Mark Allen 6-4 to reach the final, where he came up against Matthew Stevens. The Australian started brilliant with breaks of 129, 117, 96 in the first three frames, but looked second favourite when he trailed 7-6. Showing expectional calmness under pressure, Robertson stole a vital 14th frame on the black and added the last two with breaks of 53 and 56 for a 9-7 victory.
“When it gets to the final, great champions rise to the occasion," said snooker’s most successful ever antipodean player. "You see it with people like Roger Federer and Michael Jordan. They never say die. I’ve won three out of three finals now and I don’t want to know what it’s like to lose one. If I’d lost today I would have been devastated, I would have felt like I’d thrown it away.”
Robertson’s remarkable record of winning the tournament every time he had got to the semi-finals of a ranking event ended at the Welsh Open, when he suffered a surprise 6-4 reverse against Joe Swail.
At the Betfred.com World Snooker Championship, he reached the semi-finals for the first time, beating Steve Davis 10-2, Ali Carter 13-8 and Stephen Maguire 13-8. His clash with Shaun Murphy looked to be too much to handle for Robertson when he trailed 14-7, but he produced a tremendous comeback to recover to 14-14. Murphy, however, had the last laugh by compiling three frame-winning breaks to win 17-14.
“For my first time in a semi here I showed a lot of character, the way I came back, and I’m really proud of that,” said Robertson.
During the tournament, and particularly during his victory over Carter in which he stole a succession of frames from losing positions, Robertson celebrated vociferously in the arena, letting out whoops of joy and pumping his fist upon winning frames, a habit which he believes will help attract new viewers to snooker.
"If I’m watching a sport which I don’t know too much about, and someone is going absolutely nuts, I’ll probably carry on watching it," explained the flamboyant Aussie with an ‘indie band’ hairstyle.
The best season of his career to date was 2006/07, in which he won his first two ranking titles.
The left-hander’s first breakthrough came at the Royal London Watches Grand Prix in Aberdeen. After winning four of his five group matches in the new round robin phase, he beat Andrew Norman then thumped Ronnie O’Sullivan 5-1. "Neil was on fire, he hardly missed a ball and he blew me away," admitted the Rocket.
Victory over Alan McManus put Robertson through to the final where he saw off Jamie Cope 9-5.
"It’s the best week of my life, it’s just been incredible," said the Thunder from Down Under.
Robertson, who comes from Melbourne but is based in Cambridge during the season, didn’t have to wait too long before fulfilling his hopes of becoming a multiple winner. At the Welsh Open in Newport, he saw off Michael Holt and Stephen Hendry then again faced O’Sullivan in the quarter-finals and again came out on top, this time 5-4 courtesy of a nerveless clearance in the deciding frame.
Steve Davis was dispatched in the semis then he faced surprise package Andrew Higginson, who had never previously figured in the latter stages of a ranking event but belied his inexperience by coming from 6-2 down in the final to lead 8-6 with some superb snooker.
But Robertson showed his true class by responding with his best snooker under extreme pressure. Breaks of 92 and 59 made it 8-8 and he dominated the decider to win it 70-0.
"When I went 8-6 down I was thinking I’d blown it," he admitted. "I had to hang in there and hope that I would get a chance. There are not many players to win two titles in the same season so it’s great to join them."
 His first real impact was winning the World Under-21 Championship in 2003, beating China’s Liu Song 11-5 in the final at the Great Lake Centre in Taupo, New Zealand.
Later that year he won the qualifying competition for the Masters, beating Dominic Dale 6-5 in the final, to earn a wild card to the Masters. He was handed a baptism of fire at the London venue against local hero Jimmy White and lost 6-2.
During the summer months, Robertson returns to his native Melbourne. He has won the West Coast International three times in succession, on each occasion making a 147.
An avid sports fan and a keen follower of rugby, cricket and Aussie Rules football, Robertson has also learned to appreciate English football and decided to support Chelsea after marvelling at the skills of Gianfranco Zola.
He enjoys the music of Timbaland, Metallica and Guns & Roses and asserts that if it wasn’t for snooker, he would have made a career as a graphic designer.

In October 2009, Robertson became the first player from outside Britian and Ireland to win four ranking titles by beating Ding Junhui 9-4 in the final of the Grand Prix in Glasgow. 

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