The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 16

16" Monday" March "29 "1976 Snooker GUARDIAN SPECIAL REPORT stored itt Prestatyn 1st-8th May and 2nd-9thOctbber OVER 7000 IN PRIZE MONEY AND FABULOUS HOLIDAYS TO BE WON persuaded the Billiards Association to run one and duly won it. It was, of course, Davis, with his personality, skill, and business flair, who transformed snooker professionally and evolved most of the break-building techniques which are now part of the armoury of all the leading players. In the mid 50s, however, there was a snooker slump which lasted until the late KOs when three then top amateurs, Ray Reardon, John Spencer, and Gary Owen, became the first new professionals since 1952. Gradually, snooker gathered momentum again with BBC-2's Pot Black attracting a new public for the game Now, interest in snooker runs at an unprecedentedly high level. The game has become more international, the' top players earn a great deal of money and amateur tournaments proliferate.

Success has brought its problems but progress is discernible on moat fronts and should result in a consolidation of snooker's status as one of our greatest indoor games. Clive Everton BY far the most ambitious -snooker sponsorship ever attempted ds.that vof and who are riot -only 'supporting, the Embassy World Professional Championship with prize money of 15,300, but also three substantial subsidiary competitions, Embassy Ladies Open, the Embassy Invitation (an international, amateur tournament), and the Embassy Open nament open to Britain's four million club players). The world- championship, over the last four or five years, has acquired the kind of status which attracts substantial television and newspaper coverage. BBC-2's "Pot Black." has sold snooker to women to an extent not previously contemplated, and since the social climate is also giving women more encouragement to play, the women's game is one of snooker's great growth areas. The Embassy Invitation brings together sixteen leading amateurs from all parts of the British Isles.

This com-petiion will be supported by the Embassy Open, an event which allows each of Britain's 10,000 clubs to organise its own from which two players went forward to ten regional eliminators held last Saturday with the survivors battling for the 500 first prize at Manchester alongside the professional championship. The present wave of snooker sponsorship was initiated by Gallahers, the tobacco group whose brands include Park Drive and Benson and Hedges, with the Park Drive 2,000 tournament in 1971. For years, the top professionals not that there were very many of them in those depressed snooker times had made the greater part of their livings through exhibitions in clubs but the Park Drive 2,000, a four-man round robin, introduced a much more interesting competitive format to these audiences. There were four such tournaments, each event comprising eighteen one-night stands the BE' Ladbroke's best known direct sponsorship is the England Rest of the World professional series. It has been said that Joe Coral's biggest contribution to snooker has been the 10,215.55 John Spencer, the twice world champion, won.

from them last month with three trebles and an accumulator. However, in a more formal sense, the company is involved in snooker chiefly through the Joe Coral British Pairs Championship, an amateur tournament in which pairs, initially zoned, compete on a home or away basis in their own clubs with specially staged semifinals and final. The Double Diamond British Team Championship takes place from October to May and is' an excellent example of how sponsorship of snooker can be as a marketing tool while helping the sport. Canadian Olub have entered snooker this winter with an ambitious five-year plan, linked to an annual national handicap competition. Watney Mann have devised (many small sponsorships at local league level as indeed have many other brewers but their main stake in snooker is through their six months of one-night stands in clubs in which Fred Davis and Rex Williams play each other and also each club's own heroes Pontins holiday camp at Prestatyn has become a mecca for snooker enthusiasts in the first week of May for the last two years.

Pontins are now to offer another snooker week, this time for amateurs onlv but again with big money prizes, at Prestatyn in October. Clive Everton in clubs with a grand final between the top' two finishers, the success of which encouraged Park Drive to sponsor the 1973 and 1974 World Professional Championships. This, snooker's blue riband, had, always been a long drawn out affair, dragging on for several months in a variety of venues with no continuity of interest or publicity, but the 1973 event was drastically and beneficially telescoped into a fortnight with simultaneous play on. eight tables. Park Drive, who also sponsored a series of professional tournaments in the North which were recorded by Yorkshire Television, dropped out of snooker when the 1975 championship was granted to Australia only for Gallahers to stay involved in the sport Benson and Hedges, a brand with an image which is distinctively up-market just as Park Drive's is unequivocally working class.

They did so through the Benson and Hedges Masters tournament, a glossily presented showcase affair staged at the West Centre Hotel in 1975 (dinner jackets only for the final) and again at the New London Theatre in January this year, the unqualified success of which illustrates that snooker enthusiasts are now drawn from all points of the social spectrum. One of the most notable Innovations at the 1973 world championship was the provision of on-site betting facilities by Ladbroke's, a facility which was also provided at the two Norwich Union opens in 1973 and 1974 (Norwich Union have temporarily it is hoped withdrawn from snooker) and which wall be offered too at the Embassy World Championship at Middlesbrough and Manchester next month. Full details from Snooker Dept, Pontin's Holidays, Bournemouth BHI2NT, Kenneth Saunders Ray Reardon SNOOKER is not a game one often associates with long, hot summers, but it was born a hundred years ago in an Indian summer so hot, so long, and so boring that only a new came oould relieve the ennui of the Indian Army officers stationed at Ootacu-mund in the Nilgai Hills in Southern India. Field-Marshal St Neville Bowles Chamberlain, formerly of the Devonshire Regiment, but by then retired from active service into an advisory post with the Indian Army, was one of the day-in, day-out regulars at the Ooty Club, the centre of social life for. the officers, where billiards, the father of all billiard table games, pyramids, and life pool were all played ad nauseam.

It was his idea to combine elements from all three games into a new game which came to be known as snooker. Chamberlain's new game proved a popular innovation, but often less popular with those players who by accident or design left the cue-ball in euck a posi'-jion that their opponents amid not strike the ball "on." Such a player would be called usually jokingly, a snooker," a nickname given to iirst-year cadets at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, with the implication that they were the lowest of the low. "Snooker" was an Indian slang expression of the period with roughly the same meaning. For about ten years, snooker remained as exclusive to the Ooty Club (whose table stands to this day) as the Wall Game to Eton but in 1885 Chamberlain met John Roberts, not only the professional billiards champion, but the dominant personality in billards trade and promotion, in Bangalore. On his return to Britain, Roberts began to commercialise the game and, in 1891.

the rules and the position of the coloured balls being subject to a number of local interpretations, John Dow-land, a minor professional, produced the first generally accepted set of rules. Meanwhile, in 1887. the game had reached Australia, possiblv through members of the Ind'an Army, but more likely through word of mouth from BritisT professional players. Frank Smith (sen.) and Henry Upton Alcock, a tabic maker, claimed that thev had invented it, but in fact Smith's role was limited to regularising the game and rules in Australia and Alcock's to providing the equipment. The English Amateur Snuoker Championship was instituted in 191 and was bizarrely won in 1918 by an American who practised daily for several months at the Pal-merston Restaurant before entering pseudonymously as T.

Palmer, but there was no professional championship until 1927 when Joe Davis fed lowesnooker In this book the well known commentator and originator of 'Pot Black', 'Whispering' Ted Lowe, has used his wealth of experience of the game to write a comprehensive and authoritive guide for the beginner and for 'fVlr. Fully illustrated with photographs and diagrams EP Sport Snooker will be indispensable to all enthusiasts wishing to improve their game whether as a pastime or with the serious, intention of reaching competitive level. Price 2.50. Available from all good booksellers or in case of difficulty direct from Gp EP Publishing, East Ardsley, Wakefield, England. DIARY APRIL 7-9 Embassy Ladies' Open Championship, Middlesbrough 8-10 Embassy Invitation Amateur tournament, Wythenshawe, Forum, Manchester.

16-17 Embassy Open (final stages), Wythenshawe Forum. 11-19 Embassy World Professional Championship, Middlesbrough Town Hall (from. 10th) and Wythenshawe Forum. 20-23 Embassy World Professional Snooker Championship Final, Wythenshawe Forum. MAY 1 -8 Pon'tin's Festival of Snooker, Prestatyn.

8-11 Canadian Club Festival of Snooker at Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds. 17.20 Double Diamond British Team Snooker Championship final stages at Leofric Hotel, Coventry. 18-19 I oo Coral British Pairs Champonship semi-finals and final at Fisher, and Ludlow, Birmingham. ILeamins ttflne gaaime easily il COMPOSITION THE place is Edinburgh date, mid-fifties junior reporters from the Edinburgh papers and the local offices of the nationals sit through the daily chore of trying to look attentive in the Burgh Court magistrates' court it would be called in England. After what seems, and sometimes is, ages, the last arch-criminal is fined 1 for peeing in public or whatever, the figure of justice from on high rises, and the lesser figures below shuffle out, thankful.

All good young reporters should now dash back to their offices, bursting to tell the world about the penalties of peeing in public, or whatever. The good young reporters Makers of the finest Billiard and Snooker Balls available. Our association with the game dates back a long way and we are currently sponsoring the British Boys and Youth Championship. The Super Crystalate ball has been used in numerous tournaments including Norwich Union, the Benson and Hedges Masters and. World Amateur Snooker Championship.

If you would like to know more call at your local sports shop or write for a list of suppliers to duly dash. Not so the bad young reporters. They, casting glances right and left, sneak off to continue their education in quite a different direction, secure in the knowledge that the office hasn't a clue what time the court finishes so won't be too surprised if they get back an hour later than they should. Tne billiard hall, as it was known, was down a rather smelly alley off what Edinburgh believes is its most famous street after Princes Street, the Royal Mile. It's smelly because that chap a quid in court was probably down this way last night.

But it's not half so smelly as the billiard hall, which seems to have kept a thousand cats imprisoned within its walls for 10 years. The game gets under way, and because they come here often and are ap skilled as the tools will allow, a frame doesn't take too long. The stakes are low well, on a fiver a week less national insurance a tanner a game is enough. And don't forget it's another tanner for the frame. So maybe there's just time for another frame, another hammering for someone, and digging deep, another tanner, before it's back to the office.

Lest the good snooker-playing citizenry of Edinburgh raises i-tp cues in anger, let me say that not all billiard halls were like this one. Sadly though, most were. What was funny was the way establishments, snooker, playing, for the use of, not only in Edinburgh but-acrosti the whole of Britain, insisted on calling themselves billiard halls. Nobody ever played billiards. Well, when did you last see someone play billiards Equally hard to kill off, for a long time, was the feeling that the (snooker game, billiards game, call a game by any name, was not quite, quite well, just not quite.

In fact, the image is changing, and thank goodness for that. What, after all, is wrong with a game played by many of the top people who have at least a half-size if not a full-size table in the little old mansion down the road The isame game is played by the same people in clubs around the country, and nowhere more avidly than in the olubs of Pall Mall, St James's, and Mayfair. When the Arts Club, born 1863, had a total facelift and re-opened in 1975, one of the priorities was a snooker table with full equipment. Outside clubland, the game is thriving in public halls which do not smell of cats and which do have playable tables. It no longer costs sixpence a frame, unfortunately.

Two gentlemen from the Guardian, indulging in some very necessary research for this report, spent two hours one lunch-time in a hall near Piccadilly Circus. The bill, which admittedly included sandwiches and copious amounts of beer, came to 6. In terms of playing time, that meant about 1 a frame. Snooker is respectable now. Iain Mackenzie Alexander House, 239-241 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W.1.

mm IDDLE TAR AsdefitAedmH.M.GovernmentTabtespublishedidFebruaryl976.- EVERY PACKET CARRIES A GOVERNMENT HEALTH WARNING..