And here is his assessment of snooker in 2025:
Published 29/12/2025
Zhao Xintong’s 2025 World Championship triumph tightened China’s grip on the future of snooker – it should be a wake-up call for the UK
China’s immense investment in snooker following Ding Junhui’s landmark China Open triumph in 2005 has long made the nation an emerging force on the World Snooker Tour, but 20 years after Ding’s success, they had their crowning moment. Zhao Xintong’s remarkable World Championship victory highlighted not only China’s exciting prospects, but the UK’s need to support snooker at grassroots level.
The most significant snooker image of 2025 was captured in the moments after Zhao Xintong became world champion on May 5.
As the Crucible audience rose to acclaim him, he was handed a Chinese flag and proudly held it aloft. It felt like the Americans planting the Stars and Stripes on the moon.
Snooker’s future belongs to China. Just 25 years ago, they had no professionals. Now there are 28 Chinese players on the World Snooker Tour, a number of whom are winning titles or threatening to do so.
They are young, hungry and dedicated, improving all the time and inspiring each other. In contrast, the leading British players are overwhelmingly north of 35 years old. Several of them are undoubtedly legends, but for most, their best days are behind them.
Following the then 18-year-old Ding Junhui’s capture of the 2005 China Open, the Chinese state heavily invested in snooker, opening thousands of clubs and academies and even putting the sport on the school curriculum.
It took time for results to come, but the best players turned professional and many of them have since won trophies, despite the challenges associated with moving to the UK at a young age, facing cultural and language barriers and a degree of homesickness completely alien to British players.
The UK, meanwhile, has puttered along, relying on its older stars to carry the flame without any government help at grassroots level. There are talented youngsters in Britain, but they are coming through in a trickle, not the flood of years gone by.
At the beginning of 2005, the elite top 16 in the rankings contained seven British players aged under 30. Currently, there are just two – Jackson Page and Stan Moody – ranked inside the top 64.
This very fact should be a wake-up call, but snooker clubs in the UK continue to close while National Lottery funding goes primarily to Olympic sports.
Darts, perhaps the closest cousin to snooker, has invested in a junior circuit, the pathway from which Luke Littler emerged. Snooker also has its junior and amateur tours, but the sink or swim nature of the professional circuit means progress is tough and for many it becomes financially unsustainable to continue.
Zhao was, of course, suspended for two years in 2023, one of 10 Chinese players who were punished for their part in a match-fixing scandal. The ringleaders, Liang Wenbo and Li Hang, were banned from the sport for life, after being found to have coerced other players into manipulating results or betting on them.
Zhao had to start again, slogging round snooker clubs on the Q Tour, where his extraordinary talent was evident as he won all but one of the events he entered.
Given a wildcard for the World Championship, he started in the first qualifying round, making century breaks in each of the first two frames. He survived a couple of close contests to reach the Crucible, where he led from the front in every match.
In the semi-finals, he took Ronnie O’Sullivan apart in their second session, winning all eight frames before beating another legend, Mark Williams, 18-12 in the final.
Like many first-time world champions before him, Zhao has found it hard to push on, winning only the invitational Riyadh Season Snooker Championship in the first half of this season.
Then again, nobody has dominated. The last 14 ranking titles of 2025 were each won by a different player. Judd Trump, the pre-eminent force of the last seven years, was not among the champions.
There have been 16 maximum breaks made this season, already a record. Twenty-five were compiled in 2025. Conditions vary from tournament to tournament, but the strength in depth on tour and sheer number of events has driven standards, leading to some eye-catching snooker over the last 12 months.
Zhao’s compatriots Xiao Guodong, by retaining the Wuhan Open, and Wu Yize, who achieved a breakthrough win at the International Championship, were Chinese ranking event winners, while Zhou Yuelong and Chang Bingyu reached finals.
At the Xi’an Grand Prix in October, Williams struck a blow to the veteran contingent by becoming – at 50 – the oldest player to win a ranking title.
Shaun Murphy, who spurned a 147 chance in his Masters quarter-final in January, made one in the semis in the Alexandra Palace bear pit. He won the title, notably potting every ball he attempted while using the rest.
John Higgins won his first ranking title for four years at the World Open and then a few weeks later triumphed again at the Tour Championship, beating Mark Selby 10-8 in a classic final which included eight century breaks.
At the Crucible, Higgins lost an epic, nerve-shredding quarter-final to Williams, who pounced when the Scot missed match ball blue in the decider, making a steely clearance to win 13-12 on the black.
O’Sullivan, not to be outdone by his Class of ’92 colleagues, dazzled as only he can at the Saudi Arabia Masters by making two 147 breaks during his semi-final defeat of Chris Wakelin, although Neil Robertson shaded him 10-9 in the final.
Selby ended the year strongly, winning the Champion of Champions and then making an exquisite 69 break from a very tough table to complete a 10-8 defeat of Trump in the UK Championship final.
The most heartwarming moment of the year was Jack Lisowski, a popular and dashingly talented player, finally winning his first title at the Northern Ireland Open after six failures in finals.
It had been a difficult year for Lisowski. His father died in March, just as Jack was due to play close friend Trump at the World Grand Prix in Hong Kong.
In Belfast, Lisowski beat Trump 9-8 to claim the Alex Higgins Trophy before describing the world No. 1 as “the closest thing I have to a brother“.
Snooker still has the capacity to produce such visceral sporting and human drama. It has a varied cast of characters and more tournaments than ever.
There is no doubt, though, that China is now established as the sport’s new powerhouse. The challenge for the rest of the world, in 2026 and beyond, will be to keep up.
David, unsurprisingly, completely “ignores” mainland Europe in his report. I’m absolutely not surprised but all the same it pains me. We have fantastic young players in mainland Europe, Michał Szubarczyk who will turn 15 in two weeks time, being the prime example, but we have no rich snooker history, no unified supporting structures for the sport1 and our young talents are “isolated”.
Mainland Europe is a patchwork of countries, with different history, different cultures, different languages. As an example, in my tiny country of origin, Belgium, with a size that is less than 1/4 of that of England, we have no less than three official languages, French, Flemish (Nederlands) and German, and “scattered” political structures reflecting the rather chaotic diversity of the country. That diversity is an asset but also at times an obstacle, or at the very least a challenge…
- Actually in most countries barely any structures at all. ↩︎
Ronnie O'Sullivan 