page_title: Steve Davis
section_title: 2005–2010
hierarchical_section_title: Steve Davis / Career / 2005–2010
caption_attribution_description: English: Steve Davis at Sports Club Turku in Finland during a match against Ville Pasanen (former Finnish Champion).
context_page_description: Steve Davis, OBE is a retired English professional snooker player from Plumstead in southeast London. He dominated the sport during the 1980s, winning six World Snooker Championships held the world number one ranking for seven consecutive seasons, and is the first snooker player to earn over £1 million in prize money. The winner of the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year in 1988, he is the only snooker player to win the award.
  Davis won 28 ranking events, the fourth-highest total. In addition to his six world titles, he won the Masters three times and the UK Championship six times for a total of 15 Triple Crown titles—third behind Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry. During the 1987–88 season, Davis was the first player to win all three Triple Crown events in a single season and is one of three players to achieve this. He has a career total of 355 competitive century breaks, including the first officially recognised and first televised maximum break in professional competition. The 1985 World Championship final against Dennis Taylor, which was decided on the final black, attracted 18.5 million viewers for a record post-midnight UK television audience.
context_section_description: Davis reached his 100th major career final at the 2005 UK Championship in York, his first appearance in the event's final since 1990. He beat defending champion Stephen Maguire 9–8 with a 145 break, and Stephen Hendry 9–6 in the semi-finals before he lost 6–10 to Ding Junhui. Davis brushed off suggestions of retirement before the World Championships, and reached the second round (where he lost to Murphy). His performances during the 2006–07 season, including reaching the 2006 UK Championship quarter-finals and the Welsh Open semi-finals, ensured that Davis was still a top-16 player at age 50.
   
  Although Davis dropped out of the top sixteen a year later, he returned to form in the 2008–09 season by reaching the quarter-finals of the Shanghai Masters and Grand Prix – the first time he reached consecutive ranking-event quarter-finals since 1996. At the 2009 World Snooker Championship, Davis lost 2–10 to Neil Robertson in the first round. He failed to qualify for the televised stages of the first two tournaments of the 2009–10 season, losing 4–5 to Matthew Selt in the Shanghai Masters and 0–5 to Mark Davis in the Grand Prix. In the next tournament, the 2009 UK Championship, he defeated Michael Judge 9–7 to set up a first-round match against Hendry (which he lost 6–9). Davis began 2010 by failing to qualify for the Welsh Open and the China Open, losing 2–5 to Dominic Dale and 3–5 against Mike Dunn in the final qualifying round. In March, he qualified for the World Championship for the 30th time by defeating Adrian Gunnell 10–4.
  In the first round, Davis defeated Mark King 10–9. At 52, he was the oldest player to win a match at the Crucible since Eddie Charlton defeated Cliff Thorburn in 1989. In the second round, against defending champion John Higgins (a 1–20 favourite) Davis led 6–2 after the first session, 9–7 after the second session and won 13–11, a win Clive Everton called "the greatest upset in the 33 years the Crucible has been hosting the championship." This made him the oldest world quarter-finalist since Charlton in 1983. In the quarter-final match against Australian Neil Robertson, Davis recovered from a 2–12 deficit to force the match into the third session before losing 5–13. On 29 April 2010, to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1985 World Championship final, Davis appeared with Taylor before the beginning of the first semi-final to stage a humorous re-enactment of their historic final frame; Taylor entered the arena wearing a pair of comically-oversized glasses, and Davis arrived sporting a red wig. Despite having his best run at the World Championship for five years and reaching the quarter-finals for only the second time since 1994, this was his last appearance at the Crucible; he failed to qualify for the World Championship again before his retirement.
  Davis began the 2010–11 season by qualifying for the televised stages of the Shanghai Masters, whitewashing Rod Lawler 5–0 before losing 3–5 in the first round to Jamie Cope. He lost his qualifying matches in the next two tournaments: 1–3 to Peter Ebdon in the last 64 of the World Open, and 2–9 to Mark Joyce in the last 48 of the 2010 UK Championship. Davis participated in the Players Tour Championship; his best result was at the Paul Hunter Classic, where he reached the quarter-finals before losing 1–4 to Shaun Murphy. He finished 67 on the Order of Merit. He reached the final of the World Seniors Championship, losing 1–4 to Jimmy White. He reached the third qualifying round of the German Masters, but was whitewashed by Ryan Day 0–5. Davis lost the first qualifying matches of his next two tournaments, defeated by Joe Jogia 3–4 in the Welsh Open and 4–5 by James Wattana in the China Open. He narrowly reached the last qualifying round of the World Championship by defeating Jack Lisowski 10–9 before losing 2–10 to Stephen Lee.
caption: Davis during a 2008 match against Ville Pasanen
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