Graeme Dott

Graeme Dott (born 12 May 1977) is a Scottish professional snooker player and snooker coach from Larkhall.

The previous record holder had been the classic final frame black ball finish 1985 final between Englishman Steve Davis and Northern Irishman Dennis Taylor, which ended at 12:19 a.m. (GMT).

The Dott–Ebdon match finished half an hour later, despite featuring three fewer frames, reflecting the slow overall pace of the match, so slow that both afternoon sessions only had six frames, rather than the usual eight.

After winning the UK Under-19 Championship in 1992 and Scottish Amateur Championship in 1993, Dott turned professional in 1994.

He turned professional in 1994 and first entered the top 16 in 2001.

Early successes included reaching the quarter-final of the 1996 Welsh Open and qualifying for the World Championship for the first time in 1997.

Dott was a runner-up in the 1999 Scottish Open, the 2001 British Open, the 2004 World Championship and the 2005 Malta Cup.

He scored his first competitive 147 break in the 1999 British Open.

Dott started his campaign with an easy 10–3 victory over former champion John Parrott, before beating veteran Nigel Bond 13–9 in the second round.

In his quarter-final match against Australia's Neil Robertson, Dott took a 12–8 lead, before being pegged back to 12–12, and then edging through the deciding frame to win 13–12.

He slowly climbed the rankings, reaching the top sixteen in 2001, where he remained until 2009.

Prior to this, he disliked going to China, not helped by a disastrous match in 2002.

In the semi-finals, he faced then two-time champion Ronnie O'Sullivan in a rematch of their 2004 Championship final.

They finished the second session tied 8–8, but Dott swept O'Sullivan in the third session en route to a 17–11 victory.

Dott faced Peter Ebdon in the final for the £200,000 prize.

He began the last session leading 15–7, but Ebdon won six successive frames to reduce the deficit to two.

Dott eventually won 18–14, after winning some vital frames with impressive clearances.

It stands as the longest final ever, and was, at the time, the latest to finish (John Higgins's victory over Mark Selby the following year now holds the record).

He has won two ranking titles, the 2006 World Snooker Championship and the 2007 China Open, and was runner-up in the World Championships of 2004 and 2010.

The victory over Ebdon took Dott's ranking up to number 6 for the 2006/2007 season, a career high at the time.

Dott shone in the 2006 UK Championship as well, reaching the semi-finals, where he lost 7–9 to Stephen Hendry (a player who Dott never managed to beat in a ranking tournament) after an earlier 7–5 lead.

He reached number 2 in the world rankings in 2007, but a subsequent episode of clinical depression seriously affected his form, causing him to drop to number 28 for the 2009–10 season.

He then recovered his form, regained his top-16 ranking, and reached a third World Championship final.

He briefly became the provisional world number one in the rankings system after overcoming Jamie Cope 9–5 to win the 2007 China Open, his second ranking tournament win.

However, going into the 2007 World Championship as defending champion, he suffered a shock 7–10 defeat in the first round to Ian McCulloch in the opening match of the tournament, which dented his prospects of remaining world number 1.

Newly crowned world champion John Higgins overtook him.

The loss against McCulloch also maintained the "Crucible curse", as Dott became the seventeenth consecutive first-time champion to lose his title the very next year.

The 2007–08 season was more of a struggle for Dott, who described his late-2007 form as "hopeless... nowhere near to playing a good enough standard".

His season started promisingly, as he reached the semi-finals of the season-opening 2007 Shanghai Masters, where he defeated Michael Holt 5–4, tournament favourite Ding Junhui 5–1, and Stephen Lee 5–4, before losing his semi-final against Ryan Day 2–6, to close the gap on world number 1 John Higgins, who went out in the second round; however, Dott then won no further matches that season; a run of twelve consecutive defeats, including all five group matches in the 2007 Grand Prix, started from October 2007 onwards.

In the 2007 UK Championship he was eliminated in the first round, 7–9, by unseeded Dave Harold, while in the Masters he lost 5–6 to eventual runner-up Stephen Lee for the third successive year.

Another first-round elimination followed in the 2008 Malta Cup, this time to Mark Williams.

In the 2008 Welsh Open he lost his opening match against Michael Judge 4–5.

In frame 7, when leading 4–2, he missed the pack completely with his break-off after miscuing, and also failed to hit the bunch on his next shot after being snookered.

Dott announced that he might miss the 2008 World Championship due to personal reasons, and his manager said he had been suffering from depression.

However, he did eventually participate in the tournament, but was eliminated in the first round for the second year in a row, losing 7–10 to Joe Perry, dropping him to number 13 in the new world rankings, and finishing the season outside the top 32 in the one-year rankings.

Things did not improve in the early part of 2008–09, when a broken left arm sustained while playing football forced him to pull out of the 2008 Shanghai Masters and 2008 Grand Prix.

Dott won the Berlin leg of the World Series of Snooker, but withdrew from the Moscow event two days before it began, as his wife was preparing to give birth.

Moreover, at over 74 minutes, the 27th frame was the then longest in the history of the World Championship, beating the previous record of 70 minutes set by Canadian Cliff Thorburn and Welshman Doug Mountjoy, a record that would stand until 2009.

He reached the second round of the 2009 World Championship for the first time since winning the title in 2006, but lost to Mark Selby 10–13, causing him to drop out of the top 16.

In 2011, he published his autobiography, Frame of Mind: The Autobiography of the World Snooker Champion.