Steve "Interesting" Davis

I've always been a bit sceptical about snooker being classed as a sport. For me, sport should always involve some kind of obvious physical exertion and/or a risk to life and limb. The fact that a snooker player considers a bow tie as 'sports kit' doesn't help either.

Nevertheless, it is a sport and the professionals who play it have won my respect, for whatever that's worth.

Generally I don't have a lot of time for most sports. Football, rugby, athletics etc. all leave me un-moved, and as for tennis... That's completely insane; how can you have a game that can theoretically last for ever? Even when the matches don't continue until eternity, it certainly seems like they do.
But I digress...

I quite like watching snooker.
I've never played or even had any desire to play it, but it is a game I can understand and it is played at a pace which I can follow. Everything about the way the balls move across the table and the trajectories they take following a collision is so satisfyingly predictable. Every shot that a player takes becomes a demonstration of Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion.
The players are studiously calm and generally well behaved as they take their turn at the table, carefully chalking their cue as they analyse the probable outcome of the next shot. There is never any sense of unnecessary haste or urgency, just a measured concentration culminating in a single stroke of the cue and that wonderful sound as the balls collide and ricochet  across the soothing surface of the table to their predestined new resting places.
The player seldom exhibits any satisfaction or dismay at the success or failure of a shot, The audience may be applauding or groaning, but the player seems oblivious. They either set about the business of taking the next shot, or make their way back to their seat at the edge of the arena to watch and wait as their opponent takes their turn at the table.

The World Championships are being played at The Crucible in Sheffield at the moment, so there's been plenty of coverage on TV, and one of the best things about it has been the surprising performance by Steve Davis.

At the age of 52, he beat the defending World Champion John Higgins, before being knocked out in the quarter-finals by Neil Robertson.

Go Steve!!! All of us old buggers salute you!