Best Player Never to Have Made a Masters Final

Unlike the World Championships, there's precious few Snooker Stars of the past 40 years who have not yet made at least one Masters final.

So who do we think is the biggest underachiever in this regard?

3 votes each!

You can change your vote!

By having 3 votes each it should allow for a more meaningful spread of opinions as even if everyone thinks it's that one guy, then they'll probably all have different 2nd and 3rd choices, but that one guy will still get the most votes.

I chose the shortlist from my own list of top 50 WSC players of all time and then excluded those who primed in the old era pre-masters.

Feel free to raise hell in the comments if someone isn't available as a choice who you'd have seriously voted for in preference to the choices given.

Ebdon, Mags, and Kirk. First two were pretty easy (subjectively) but the third choice wasn’t obvious. I picked Stevens simply because of what he brought to the game, not necessarily because of outright technical ability.

plumped for ebdon, dott, maguire. though there may be some recency/age bias in there.

No Bagley!? Outrageous!

But Bagley aside, I went Ebdon, Dott, and Johnson, mainly because of their World titles. Ebdon being the clear front runner for me, and I umm and erred about Johnson.

Peter Ebdon without any doubt is the best player never to have made a Masters final. Also voted for Maguire. Maguire has been a Top16 player or thereabout for a very long time, won a few titles including a couple of very big ones and often regarded as underachiever.

Third choice wasnt easy but voted for Dott. He has a very good record at the World Championship and proved his class there. Which gives him an edge over the other players. But wasnt easy that one have to admit.

Peter Ebdon is the obvious choice for me, I also went for Joe Johnson and Eddie Charlton.

Not easy to pick three, i nearly put in a vote for Foulds but went Thorne, Kirk and Ebdon.

I found them all quite hard apart from Ebdon as well, went for Dott as 2nd but chose Charlton for 3rd in the end.

Ebdon

Johnny Bravo.

Bagley.

Ebdon, easily

Joe Davis?

SnookerEd25 wrote:Joe Davis?

he had retired by the time the masters started.

though fred could be a shout. think he his best was the quarters?

SnookerEd25 wrote:Joe Davis?

I already told you. Ebdon.

HappyCamper wrote:

SnookerEd25 wrote:Joe Davis?

he had retired by the time the masters started.

though fred could be a shout. think he his best was the quarters?

I did consider Fred, but ruled him out because of many factors. There were quite a lot of the really oldies still playing in '75 with potential to get to a final, like Fred, Rex Williams, John Pullman and many more, but it just seemed a bit unfair to give them the moniker of underachiever in a tournament that they were never able to compete for at their peak, or even near-peak.

Interesting that Kirk and Willie are attracting a few votes when Willie only ever won four matches at the Masters and never reached the semi's, whilst the only two Masters matches Kirk ever won was when he famously reached the 84 semi & made a maxi in the process. Think Big Bill may only have won one Masters match, as did David Taylor. I can't actually recall Ebdon or Maguire looking like they were ever gona reach a Masters final either but I could be wrong. Tony Knowles probably shuda won both semi's he appeared in but instead lost them both 6-4. He defo has to be frontrunner for players who've never reached a Triple Crown final.

For reference, for those of us who can't list all the finalists off the top of our heads, here is the list of finalists copied from Empire State Human's Almanac:

Name F Plyd F won
O'Sullivan, Ronnie 13 7
Hendry, Stephen 9 6
Higgins, Alex 5 2
Higgins, John 5 2
Selby, Mark 5 3
Griffiths, Terry 4 1
Reardon, Ray 4 1
Thorburn, Cliff 4 3
Davis, Steve 3 3
Hunter, Paul 3 3
Parrott, John 3 0
Robertson, Neil 3 1
Williams, Mark 3 2
Ding Junhui 2 1
Doherty, Ken 2 0
Hallett, Mike 2 0
Mountjoy, Doug 2 1
Murphy, Shaun 2 1
White, Jimmy 2 1
Allen, Mark 1 1
Bingham, Stuart 1 1
Carter, Ali 1 0
Fu, Marco 1 0
Hawkins, Barry 1 0
Lee, Stephen 1 0
Mans, Perrie 1 1
McManus, Alan 1 1
Miles, Graham 1 0
O'Brien, Fergal 1 0
Perry, Joe 1 0
Spencer, John 1 1
Stevens, Matthew 1 1
Taylor, Dennis 1 1
Trump, Judd 1 1
Wattana, James 1 0
Wilson, Kyren 1 0
Yan Bingtao 1 1

I've voted for Eddie Charlton, Peter Ebdon and Stephen Maguire, based on the all-time ranking list.

The highest ranked player I have who is not available as an option above is John Virgo

chengdufan wrote:I've voted for Eddie Charlton, Peter Ebdon and Stephen Maguire, based on the all-time ranking list.

So did I. I wanted to include Dott but felt the other three were slightly more deserved.

badtemperedcyril wrote:

chengdufan wrote:I've voted for Eddie Charlton, Peter Ebdon and Stephen Maguire, based on the all-time ranking list.

So did I. I wanted to include Dott but felt the other three were slightly more deserved.

I will join the chorus for the Ebdon-Maguire-Charlton combination. I was quite surprised that Eddie had never reached the final, given that he was pretty much ever-present from the first one in 1975 right up until 1986 (although he wasn't there in 1977 or 1978, curiously) and certainly at the start of this run, was a top, top player.

Charlton all day long. Man was a beast.

There’s not enough footage of Eddie available on YouTube but if anyone hasn’t seen much of him, I’d direct you to 1973, 78 and 79 World Championships. Also an hour and a half or so of his 82 semi-final against Reardon. And for real snook purists there’s even his epic Crucible first round against Thorburn in 89, where Charlton, by then in his sixtieth year, grinds down the Grinder after some ten hours of play!

Gotta be Ebdon by a stretch. He never played well at the Masters - Didn't seem as determined. Remember him losing against Jimmy where he uncharacteristically collapsed from about 5-1 up losing 6-5 after having numerous chances. I had backed him to win, so that was frustrating :)... But next year they played again and I back White and White won nicely. in 18 appearances, he only made 2 semis.
Johnson aside from his world title and subsequent final, really did very little. Only 3 other ranking semi finals in his whole career. Aside from Spencer whose career tailed off after 77, no other WC even comes close to only having 5 semi finals in their whole career. All aside from Reardon (like Spencer affected by age) who had 8 well in double figures.

I think for the other two, probably Maguire and Dott, though Charlton also very close.

Maguire, Thorne and Bott.

Straight choice… Steady Eddie or Steady Peter?