Why they rank here
Snooker's founder, first champion and first theorist. Davis co-created the World Championship in 1927 with promoter Bill Camkin, beat Tom Dennis 20-11 in the inaugural final for a purse of roughly six pounds ten shillings, and then won all fifteen stagings held up to 1946 before withdrawing permanently. He never lost a World Championship match. He was also a leading billiards professional, taking four world billiards titles between 1928 and 1932, and it was his understanding of positional play in that game that he transplanted into snooker. On 22 January 1955 at Leicester Square Hall he made the first officially ratified maximum break of 147. His instructional books taught a generation that snooker was a scoring game rather than a defensive one, establishing break-building from the black as orthodoxy. Comparisons across eras are impossible in his case: he faced a tiny professional field on slower equipment, but he invented the standards everyone since has been measured against.
Career profile
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