Johnny Bravo wrote:Pink Ball wrote:I know a competition is ongoing, but nobody’s going to agree with everything, so post your top ten here.
Mine are:
1. Dennis Taylor 18-17 Steve Davis
2. Ronnie O’Sullivan 17-16 Mark Selby
3. Alex Higgins 16-15 Jimmy White
4. Stephen Hendry 18-17 Jimmy White
5. Alex Higgins 16-15 Steve Davis
6. Ken Doherty 17-16 Paul Hunter
7. Mark Selby 17-15 Ding Junhui
8. Stephen Hendry 16-15 Steve Davis
9. John Higgins 10-9 Ronnie O’Sullivan
10. Peter Ebdon 18-17 Stephen Hendry
The match you chose as a winner has a lot of historical importance, but otherwise it was a garbage match
Johnny, allow me to explain why I always (grudgingly) place Taylor-Davis top of the pile.
I know that when it comes to judging the greatest players of all-time, you go for a far more emotional criteria than I do. I stick to how much guys won, and the stength of the opposition they played against. You tend to bump the likes of Alex Higgins and Jimmy White way further up your list than I do.
When it comes to judging matches, you and I tend to swap our criteria around. You seem to focus entirely on quality. I go by the emotions each match produced. A lot of the greatest matches of all-time, in my view, are great because of a frame or two, usually towards the end.
Yes, I do take quality into account. But it's far from my top criteria. It's why the likes of O'Sullivan's semi-final wins over Hendry don't even qualify for consideration. If I went with quality, then something like Hendry-O'Sullivan 1999, Selby-Ding 2017, or perhaps even the 2019 CoC final would win.
But why go down that route? Why would you judge a match solely on quality? No match had anything like the impact of the Taylor-Davis final, nothing produced drama like it, and it was unquestionably snooker's greatest night.
I'm as sick of hearing about it as everyone else is. For a while I'd have shoved it way down the list just because I was so tired of it. But taking a step back and weighing everything up, it is the greatest match ever. And to be honest, I don't think it will be dethroned in my lifetime, or anyone else's lifetime for that matter.