Fred Davis (snooker player)

Fred Davis (14 August 1913 – 16 April 1998) was an English professional player of snooker and English billiards.

Fred Davis was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire on 14 August 1913, the youngest of six children of coalminer-turned-pub landlord Fred Davis and his wife Ann-Eliza.

His snooker-playing brother Joe, 12 years his senior, was the eldest of the six siblings.

Joe actively discouraged Fred's professional ambitions, telling Fred that he was not good enough to pursue a professional career.

Fred learned to play on a miniature table, a Christmas gift from his parents.

Having dominated snooker from 1927 to 1946, Joe Davis retired from the World Snooker Championship after his 1946 victory.

Fred reached the final the following year, but lost 62–82 to Scot Walter Donaldson.

Davis' professional career started in 1929 at the age of 15 as a billiards player.

Fred instead played English billiards which he later called "his first love", and he won the British Boys Under-16 Billiards Championship in 1929.

In 1929, he turned professional automatically under the rules of the Billiards Association and Control Council.

He competed in his first world snooker championship in 1937 and reached the final three years later, losing to Joe by 36–37.

He first played in the World Snooker Championship in 1937 but lost 17–14 to Welshman Bill Withers in the first round, a defeat that Davis put down to ignoring his worsening eyesight.

His brother Joe considered this defeat an affront to the family honour, and hammered Withers 30–1 in the next round.

Joe's fury with his brother's performance persuaded Fred to consult an optician, who devised a pair of glasses with swivel lens joints to help his play.

He reached the semi-finals in 1938 and 1939 before reaching the final in 1940, losing 36–37.

Davis was called up on 20 July 1940 to serve in the British Army for the Second World War, only five days after his wedding.

From 1947, Davis played in five straight finals against Scottish player Walter Donaldson, winning three.

He was an eight-time World Snooker Championship winner from 1948 to 1956, and a two-time winner of the World Billiards Championship.

He was the brother of 15-time world snooker champion Joe Davis; the pair were the only two players to win both snooker and English billiards world championships, and Fred is second on the list of those holding most world snooker championship titles, behind Joe.

Joe Davis had been undefeated in the world championships, but Fred would go on to be the only player to beat Joe on level terms – a feat he achieved four times between 1948 and 1954, despite Joe previously telling Fred that he would never beat him.

Snooker remained a huge attraction at this time, and crowds filled Blackpool Tower Circus to see Davis beat Donaldson 84–61 in the 1948 final and 80–65 in the 1949 final.

However, times were changing, and from 1950 matches became shorter.

Donaldson beat Davis for the last time to win the 1950 title, 51–46.

By the time he was ready to play competitive billiards, the sport was in sharp decline, although he did defeat Kingsley Kennerley to win the United Kingdom Professional Billiards Championship in 1951.

Davis remarked that, once snooker had come to the fore, he assumed he would never play another billiards match.

After a career in billiards in his youth, Davis concentrated on snooker.

The pair made up the final for five straight years until 1951, with Davis winning in 1948, 1949 and 1951.

When the event merged into the World Professional Match-play Championship in 1952, Davis won five more championships, defeating Donaldson three times and then John Pulman twice.

As defending champion, Davis did not play in the 1952 event, which was only contested by two players.

Following a disagreement between some of the players and the governing body, Davis played in an alternative tournament – the World Professional Match-play Championship.

Davis then won each of the first five championships.

Davis won the first three of these events over Donaldson, but when Davis won the 1954 event with a 39–21 victory over Donaldson, it was clear there was a decline in interest as only five players entered the championship; Donaldson then retired.

After defeating John Pulman in two close finals in 1955 and 1956, Davis chose not to play in the 1957 Championship—held in Jersey and, for financial reasons, featuring just four entrants—thus leaving the path clear for Pulman to win the event.

After the war Davis and his wife had invested in a hotel in Llandudno, and this gave them some financial security away from snooker.

This proved a wise move; by the early 1960s Davis was playing exhibitions in aid of cancer charities, but soon even this limited amount of snooker activity dried up.

Following tours of Canada and Australia (where he won an international tournament in 1960) and after an exhibition in Pontefract where he performed in front of only a handful of people, Davis effectively went into retirement.

He hardly played for four seasons before being contacted by Rex Williams, who was keen to restart interest in snooker.

With the beginning of the snooker world rankings in 1976, Davis was ranked fourth in the world, and remained on the professional tour until 1993 when, aged 80, he retired due to arthritis in his left knee.

Davis won the World Billiards championship twice in 1980, defeating Rex Williams in the May event, and later Mark Wildman in the November event.

He died in 1998 after a fall in his home in Denbighshire, Wales.