John Spencer, a three-time world-champion snooker player whose suave elegance and assertive style of play helped elevate his sport, a form of billiards, above soccer and cricket on British television in the 1970’s, died Tuesday in Bolton, England. He was 71.
The cause was stomach cancer, Agence France-Presse reported.
Mr. Spencer gained a reputation for wielding his cue with immense power and mastering the “deep screw” shot, which involves exaggerated backspin. But it was his dapper manner, wry jokes and debonair look in the required tuxedo that drew mention.
“Over the years, I think the success of snooker has been that we have given it an image of elegance,” Mr. Spencer told The Toronto Star in 1988. Known as Gentleman John, he was one of the first snooker celebrities.
Snooker is played on a baize-covered table, 12 feet by 6 feet, using a cue, one white cue ball, 15 red balls and 6 of various colors. Each color is assigned a point value. A red ball is worth 1 point; a yellow, 2; green, 3; brown, 4; blue, 5; pink, 6; and black, 7. A player wins a frame by scoring more points than his opponent, using the cue ball to “pot” the balls in the table’s pockets in a prescribed manner.
Though billiards dates to the 15th century, snooker emerged from an English officer’s mess in India in 1875. A visiting billiards buff took it home to the English upper classes, but its true popularity was in working men’s clubs and pool halls.
Continue reading the main storyBy 1927, sharks turned pros were playing for a world snooker championship. But the professional game did not take off until the 1970’s, when color television revealed the balls’ colors.
Mr. Spencer, tall and soft-spoken, ambled along at the right time: his third world championship came in 1977 at the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, which became the shrine of snooker. Television ratings soared past those of soccer, rugby, cricket and tennis in the 1970’s and 80’s.
“With his wonderful playing style and charismatic personality, he was a key figure in dragging snooker into the limelight in the 1970’s,” Ronald Walker, World Snooker chairman, said in a statement.
In 1976, the BBC gave just 14 minutes of TV time to snooker; the next year, all 13 days of the championship at the Crucible were shown. A decade later, the sport received 400 hours of coverage.
The peak came in 1985, when 18.5 million people were tuned in to the BBC at 12:23 a.m. watching the thrilling conclusion of a final that had lasted for almost 15 continuous hours.
John Spencer was born in Radcliffe, near Manchester, England, on June 18, 1935. He learned to play pool at a church recreational center. When he was 14, his father, who lost an arm in World War I and used a clothes brush as a makeshift bridge for his cue, taught him to play on a full-sized table.
The boy’s talent was precocious, but the headmaster of his school forbade him to play.
After entering the Royal Air Force at 18, he did not stroke a cue for 11 years. He worked as a van driver and at other menial jobs. After a friend asked him to help out a local team, he discovered that he had lost none of his extraordinary touch.
In 1964 and 1965, he reached the final of the English amateur championship, finally winning it in 1966. He turned professional in 1967, and two years later won the first of his world titles. Within weeks, he married Margot Sawbridge, from whom he separated in the mid-1980’s.
Mr. Spencer is survived by his companion, Jean Sheffield.
In 1974, Mr. Spencer survived a car wreck, but his trusted cue — bowed, bent and 80 years old — was damaged. A “cue doctor” did what he could, and Mr. Spencer won yet another tournament with the old weapon. He became one of the first to switch to a two-piece cue.
In 1985, Mr. Spencer woke from a nap to discover that he had one of the worst imaginable problems for a snooker player: double vision.
“I never quite know which is the right ball to aim at, and often it’s potluck if I choose correctly,” he said.
He went on to become a commentator on the BBC and chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, snooker’s governing body. His health steadily declined: he had myasthenia gravis, a deterioration of the muscles that affected his eyes, and was later found to have cancer.
Last year, he discounted warnings from doctors and skydived from 13,000 feet to raise money for the Myasthenia Gravis Association. He refused more chemotherapy because he said he did not think it was necessary.
“He never complained when he lost,” recalled Terry Griffiths, a top snooker player. “He just shook your hand and said, ‘Well done.’ ”
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