1989 Websters Yorkshire Open Billiards Handicap

The Excelsior Club, Leeds

Sponsored by Webster's Brewery, Promoted by Excelsior owner and Billiards enthusiast Jim Williamson, and organised by B.& S.C.C. director Eric Hodgkinson, this is a popular and important event in the calendar. Games are of 650 up and 8 seeded professionals concede 150 to all other players. The games were played on consecutive weekends during August, the main Competition two weekends in September, and the Semis and Final on 1st October. Seeded professionals - Dagley, Sethi, Close, Foldvari, Williamson, Gilchrist, Wildman, and Russell.

Full details of the preliminaries are not available. Group winner in italics.

Group 1: Steve Hardcastle, Kevin Payne, Bill Turner, Bill Hudson.

Group 2: Bill Watson, Arthur Winn, John Barnett, Chris Rispin.

Group 3: John Bayes, Mark Hirst, Ron Sunderland, Phil Welham.

Group 4: John Murphy, Ken Shirley, John Scott, Tom Terry, Paul Dunning.

Group 5: Branson Hoole, Steve Crosland, Mike Stocks, Derick Townend.

Group 6: Steve Best Terry Ward, Alan Firth, Howard Griffiths, Peter Shelley.

Group 7: Bill Andress, Clive Everton, Richard Lodge, Paul Cavney.

Group 8: Malcolm Lax, Jim McCann, John Barker, Ellis Lloyd, Des Heald.

The last 16 play-offs saw a good win from Clive Everton in beating Robby Foldvari after the Australian had made an early 241, and an exciting finish as Terry Ward beat Peter Gilchrist by one point.

The Quarters went much as could have been predicted except that Everton might have been expected to beat a Shirley recovering from illness and short of practice. The Snooker Scene Editor is also generally (and genuinely) short of practice.

Ken Shirley scored only 217 points against Norman Dagley and can rarely have played so badly averaging a mere 10.3. Dagley started by missing a couple of easy pots but got into his stride with 71 and 181; a 62 and a penultimate visit of 150 gave him an easy victory.

Ian Williamson had a very good win over Mike Russell making two centuries and having a string of useful smaller breaks. Russell had one century but could otherwise do little as an average of 12.3 shows.

The Final was a fine match. After 25 visits the Earl Shilton man had scored only 190 points (an average of less than 8) whilst the Leeds man had had three centuries and seemed to be coasting to the Title and the £400 first prize. When Williamson is at the top-of-the-table he looks as though he will never break down but now-and-then misses pots in attempting to stay there when a cross-loser might sometimes be the better game. He must have thought that the game was well won when Dagley suddenly began to play like his old self making 97.46.182.12 and 120 unfinished to win comfortably. Williamson rarely shows any emotion but he must have found this one hard to bear. The ex-World Champion's cue-delivery, his touch, and his fluency at the spot-end were just as good as in the days before his career was interrupted by illness. It was a great win.

Winner £400. Runner-up £200.