2001 World Snooker Championship

The 2001 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 2001 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional ranking snooker tournament that took place between 21 April and 7 May 2001 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.

Defending champion Mark Williams lost in the second round 12–13 against Joe Swail, and became the latest first-time champion to fall to the Crucible curse, being unable to defend his first World title.

Ronnie O'Sullivan won his first World title by defeating John Higgins 18–14 in the final.

Tournament summary

 * Both Steve Davis and Jimmy White failed to qualify for the championship for the first time since their World Championship debuts, in 1979 and 1981 respectively. They were both eliminated in the final qualifying round; Davis lost 6–10 against Andy Hicks and White lost 7–10 against Michael Judge.
 * Patrick Wallace reached the quarter-finals of the championship on his debut, however he never qualified for the main draw again.

Prize fund
The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:


 * Winner: £250,000
 * Runner-up: £147,000
 * Semi-final: £73,000
 * Quarter-final: £36,500
 * Last 16: £20,000
 * Last 32: £14,000
 * Last 48: £10,500
 * Last 64: £6,600
 * Last 96: £4,000
 * Last 128: £1,100
 * Highest break: £20,000
 * Maximum break: £147,000
 * Total: £1,532,000

Main draw
Shown below are the results for each round. The numbers in parentheses beside some of the players are their seeding ranks (each championship has 16 seeds and 16 qualifiers).

Qualifying
The qualifying matches were held between 20 February and 4 March 2001 at the Newport Centre in Newport, Wales.

Century breaks
There were 53 century breaks in the Championship. The highest break of the tournament was 140 made by Joe Swail.


 * 140, 138, 114, 107 – Joe Swail
 * 139, 139, 136, 135, 126, 121, 113, 110, 107, 105, 103 – John Higgins
 * 139, 134, 133, 126, 100, 100 – Matthew Stevens
 * 139, 133, 119, 114, 108, 108, 106, 100, 100 – Ronnie O'Sullivan
 * 137 – Mark King
 * 135, 125, 104 – Patrick Wallace
 * 130, 108, 100 – Paul Hunter
 * 129, 106, 100 – Stephen Hendry


 * 121, 100 – Stephen Lee
 * 116, 114, 101 – Ken Doherty
 * 114, 110 – Anthony Hamilton
 * 110, 101 – Peter Ebdon
 * 108 – Michael Judge
 * 102 – Nick Dyson
 * 101 – Chris Small
 * 101 – Mark Williams