Nuggett hoping for another golden year

No wonder Steve Davis is laughing.

His place in the all-important world top 16 is practically assured for 2006-07, he has been a ranking event finalist already this season, and he is just a yellow ball short of a half century.

Yes, at 48, ‘The Nugget’ is old enough to have fathered most of his rivals at the World Snooker Championships.

Not that he claims responsibility for any. Instead, the effortlessly engaging Davis prefers to talk about his own father – apparently his son’s biggest fan - and plots how this year could be his year at the Crucible theatre.

Davis won six world titles between 1981 and 1989, and you fancy he considers a seventh attainable.

By reaching the UK Championship final in York a week before Christmas, Davis demonstrated his permanence and convinced himself that the annual return to Sheffield might yield more than a respectable run to the quarter-finals, the stage at which he fell to surprise champion Shaun Murphy last year.

With the rankings looking after themselves, Davis heads for the snooker season’s finale with an extra spring in his step.

“A good performance in the UK Championship has staved off the panic for a little while, but of course there’ll be red alert at some stage again,” he told PA Sport.

“All the players are currently going through that. Some household names are in danger of falling out of the top 16.

“I’m provisionally ninth. I’ve got someone who tells me about such things - it’s my father actually! – and so it would appear I’ve staved off ‘relegation’.

“I’ve got closer to my last remaining ambition, which is to stay in the top 16 by the age of 50.

“It doesn’t really matter but it would be a bit of a statement if I could.

“The most important event we play is the World Championship and I’m going to enjoy myself here.

“If I can get through the first round and get a run going, hopefully I can achieve a repeat of the UK.”

Andy Hicks, a 32-year-old left-hander from Cornwall, awaits Davis in the first round. Hicks has no form to speak about this season, but aside from the UK Championship, neither does Davis particularly.

“He’s a good player,” says Davis. “He got to the semis in 1995.

“He plays very well at Sheffield, compared to his general standard at other events, raises his standard for the big occasion and he’s got plenty about him.

“I like the way he plays the game, he’s a very positive player. He went through a slump a few years ago which came as a puzzlement to me, but he seems to be back on course to some degree.

“When I look at the draw and who I could have got, I wasn’t really complaining and I would imagine he was in the same boat.

“There was a time when if you were a top-16 player you’d be hoping for an easy path, and if you got a tricky one you’d be wary. That’s gone now.

“It’s a best-of-19 match against another great player.

“Eyes down, try to press the ‘go’ button, and hopefully you play him better because it’s anybody’s. Matches are so much more spin of the coin, even the first round at Sheffield, than ever before.

“But I fancy I’m going to play with more freedom than some of the years I’ve been there in the first round and frozen in the headlights.”

Davis, like John Parrott, will combine playing with commentating duties.

“It’s helped keep my brain mentally active for the top-class game,” he suggests.

“The days off at the World Championship drag on forever. The players are wandering around like zombies waiting for the next match, looking for something to do. So in effect I’ve got a day job.”

Beat Hicks, and in all likelihood Murphy will provide Davis’ second-round obstacle.

As a 22-year-old qualifier, Murphy sensationally blitzed last year’s World Championship.

“He played exceptionally,” says Davis.

“He hit form so well during the tournament, and nobody could have predicted that. He just took off like a rocket.

“It was just incredible the standard he produced. From his point of view, and despite coming up ‘dry’ by not winning anything so far this season, there will be more expectation surrounding him.

“That makes the job harder but should he turn out to be a distance runner and like the track, he could be the first player to successfully defend his first title.

“If I’m fortunate enough to win my first-round match and I get to play Shaun Murphy, then great. He played his brains out against me last year.”

Davis claims he barely remembers his early triumphs in Sheffield, and in any case, he argues modestly, they were hardly spectacular.

“But I can certainly remember the ‘85 final against Dennis Taylor!” he adds.

“It was the biggest disappointment but also the most memorable, so it was also perhaps the highlight of my career in a weird way.

“Every year it’s more and more wide open as a tournament.

“You probably look to John Higgins as the in-form man, but then there’s Ronnie O’Sullivan who could turn it on, Stephen Hendry’s in the frame as usual, and then question marks are over everyone else.”

Himself included. Twenty-five years on from that first triumph, anyone with a romantic side will be right behind Davis.