Alex Higgins's First World Snooker Championship Victory: The Times Report

This report on Alex Higgins’s first World Snooker Championship victory appeared in The Times on February 28, 1972. At the time, Higgins was the youngest-ever world champion, and he remained so until 1990 when Stephen Hendry, aged 21, claimed the record. The brief nature of this report reflects the limited commercial appeal of snooker at the time. In the 1960s and early 1970s snooker was in the doldrums, its glory days of the 1930s and 1940s seemingly gone forever. However, in the 1970s a combination of new and exciting stars such as Higgins, and the advent of colour television, dragged snooker out of the confines of working-men’s clubs, and placed it at the forefront of British sport. By the 1980s snooker enjoyed a mass appeal and healthy financial and television sponsorship. Higgins himself went on to win another world championship, in 1982, but faded in the 1990s as a new generation of young stars grabbed centre stage.