David Taylor (snooker Player)

David Taylor (born 29 July 1943) is an English former professional snooker player. He won the English Amateur Championship 11–6 against Chris Ross in 1968 and the 1968 World Amateur Snooker Championship 8–7 against Max Williams later that year. Those wins encouraged him to turn professional. He was nicknamed "The Silver Fox" because of his prematurely grey hair.

Taylor reached three major professional finals, the 1978 UK Championship, 1981 Yamaha Organs Trophy and the 1982 Jameson International, but lost them all. Together with his team-mates Steve Davis and John Spencer, he won the 1981 World Team Classic, representing England. His best performance at the World Snooker Championship was in 1980 event, when he reached the semi-finals. He was also a losing quarter-finals in three editions. Taylor was a member of the elite top 16 of the world rankings for ten consecutive years until the 1985–86 snooker season, reaching a high of number 7 in the 1981–82 season.

Early life and career

David Taylor was born on 29 July 1943 in Bowdon, Greater Manchester, and grew up in Manchester. He started playing snooker aged 14. He had been banned from fencing at a local youth club for dangerous behaviour and looking for an alternative pastime, he played on the smaller-scale tables there before moving on to use full-size tables. After leaving school, he took up a career as a hairdresser.

In 1968 he defeated Chris Ross 11–6 to win the English Amateur Championship. At the 1968 World Amateur Snooker Championship in Australia he won all four of his group matches, then beat Paddy Morgan in the semi-final before securing the title with an 8–7 victory against Max Williams. He also recorded the highest of the tournament, 96. He turned professional on his return to the UK. Alongside his snooker career, he changed profession from hairdresser to swimming coach to allow more time for snooker practice. There were few professional tournaments in the early 1970s, and Taylor accepted an offer to play exhibition matches at holiday camps.

In his first world championship match, at the 1970 event, he finished the first day of his match against Bernard Bennett 3–4 behind, but progressed to the quarter-finals by securing a winning margin at 11–8. A match report in ''Billiards and Snooker'' magazine was critical of the standard of play by both players, and in particular about Taylor "carelessly" missing s. Facing John Pulman, Tayor was on level terms at 12–12, but Pulman proceeded to win 31–20. In 1971 he lost 2–5 against reigning world champion John Spencer for the Stratford Professional title. He was seeded into the quarter-finals of the 1972 World Championship and lost 25–31 to Eddie Charlton.

In 1978, Taylor and fellow professional players John Virgo and Jim Meadowcroft were featured discussing their careers in the television programme ''This England''. Taylor was a commentator when Steve Davis made the first televised maximum break at the 1982 Lada Classic. He appeared in ''Pro-celebrity Snooker'', partnering Mike Burton (1980), Brian Close (1981), Duggie Brown (1983), and Bill Maynard (1984). In the 1990s he featured several times on the snooker-themed game show '' Big Break''.

Professional finals and later career

Taylor reached three major professional finals, but lost them all. His first major final was the 1978 UK Championship, where after progressing past Maurice Parkin, he eliminated defending champion Patsy Fagan 9–7. He then defeated both Virgo and Alex Higgins, but in the final against Doug Mountjoy he lost ten of the last twelve s as Mountjoy won 15–9. He lost 6–9 to Davis in the 1981 Yamaha Organs Trophy final after winning four consecutive frames from 2–8 behind. Earlier in the tournament he had topped the round-robin group that also included Ray Reardon, Mountjoy and Graham Miles, then defeated Kirk Stevens 5–3 in the semi-finals. After the tournament, he commented that he felt like he had been a professional player "in name only until 1977" but could now go on to win a title. In 1978 he made three consecutive s of 130, 140 and 139 Butlin's Minehead, an achievement that was recognised in the ''Guinness Book of Records''. By 1980 he was known as "The Silver Fox" because of his prematurely grey hair, the nickname having been coined by commentator Ted Lowe.

He was a member of the England team that won the 1981 World Team Classic, alongside Davis and Spencer. In the group match against Australia, Taylor lost against Morgan and Ian Anderson, and against Northern Ireland he lost against Higgins but defeated Tommy Murphy. England won both group matches by four matches to three, and progresses. In the semi-finals, he defeated Bill Werbeniuk 2–1 but then lost to Stevens by the same margin, and England won by four matches to two. Although Taylor lost both of his matches in the final, 1–2 against Terry Griffiths and 0–2 to Mountjoy, England took the title when Davis won the tiebreak match against Reardon leaving the score at four matches to three.

In the 1982 Jameson International final, he was 3–5 behind Knowles after the first , after the pair had been level at 2–2. Knowles compiled a break of 114, the highest of the tournament, to win the ninth frame, before Taylor claimed the next two frames to leave Knowles one ahead at 6–5. Breaks of 63 and 43 in the next two frames saw Knowles restore a three-frame advantage. Taylor made a break of 74 to win the 14th frame, but Knowles secured his first major title by claiming the 15th frame with a break of 76. It was the first tournament apart from the World Snooker Championship to count in the snooker world rankings. In the quarter-finals of this event Taylor beat the then World Champion, Steve Davis 5–3.

Taylor was a member of the elite Top 16 World Rankings for ten consecutive years until the 1985–86 snooker season, reaching a high of number 7 in the 1981–82 season. His best performance in the World Championship was at the 1980 event, when he lost to Cliff Thorburn 7–16 in the semi-final having beaten the six-time World Champion Reardon 13–11 in the quarter-final. He also reached the World Championship quarter-finals in 1981 and the quarter-finals at the 1981 International Open and the 1987 British Open.

In the 1988–89 snooker season, the WPBSA held three non-ranking tournaments for players who has been eliminated in the early rounds of specific ranking events. Taylor won the third of these, defeating Craig Edwards, Martin Smith, Jon Wright, and David Roe to reach the final against Steve Meakin, who Taylor beat 9–1 to win the title. At the end of the 1996–97 snooker season he was ranked 151st, and therefore did not qualify to automatically continue as a professional. In January 1998 he was co-opted as a board member of the WPBSA, but he lost his place in elections in December that year.

Taylor played at the 2000 World Seniors Masters and defeated Miles in the single-frame format competition, before losing to Willie Thorne in the semi-finals. He entered the 2010 World Snooker Championship qualifying rounds, aged 66 and playing in first competitive match for 13 years, but lost 1–5 to Paul Wykes.

Virgo wrote that "Taylor, in practice, was one of the best players I'd ever seen, second perhaps only to lexHiggins." Thorburn commented that Taylor did not seem able to bring his ability in practice into tournament play, and that he probably overthought during matches. Reardon made a similar observation, saying that although Taylor "look dso good in practice", he failed to match him nickname: "A fox is a hungry, crafty fighter, but David displays little of those characteristics."

Outside snooker

Taylor had two sons from his first marriage to Francine. As of 1984 he was married to Janice, who he met at a holiday camp in the early 1970s and had a two-year-old son with her. In 1981, after he had earned the largest prize money of his career to date, £5000 for reaching the final of the Yamaha Organs Trophy, he told Alexander Clyde of ''The Evening Standard'' that he was grateful for the encouragement and support that Janice had provided for his career and that for an earlier period of about three years they had lived almost entirely from her income.

Taylor had entered the property business using money from a winning bet on John Spencer to win the world championship. Soon after he had made his last appearance in the televised stages of the world championship in 1987, Taylor and his wife decided to purchase a guest house in Little Bollington near Altrincham in Cheshire. They were still running the business as of 2021 He had the table used for the 1987 Masters installed at the premises for his use.

Performance and rankings timeline

Career finals

Ranking finals: 1

Non-ranking finals: 4 (1 title)

Team finals: 1 (1 title)

Amateur finals: 2 (2 titles)

Notes

References

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, David
English snooker players
Sportspeople from Altrincham
1943 births
Living people