Featured Image Credit: BBC Sport
Topics: World Snooker Championship, Snooker
Ryan Smart
Zhao Xintong has set a new snooker record after beating Mark Williams 18-12 in the World Championship final.
The 28-year-old became China's first-ever world champion on Monday evening at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.
Zhao led 11-6 after the opening day of the final, and won three frames out of the first four on Monday afternoon to extend his lead further.
He entered the final session leading 17-8 and needing just one frame to win the World Championship.
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But Williams threatened the most remarkable of comebacks, taking all four frames of the penultimate mini-session to pull it back to 18-12.
However, a missed red in the next frame allowed Zhao in, and he compiled a fearless near-clearance to seal a stunning win.
As a result, Zhao has become the first amateur player to lift the iconic World Championship trophy in the tournament's 98-year history.
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It has always been played as a professional tournament all the way back to 1927, with its founder Joe Davis winning all 15 titles up to 1946.
But Zhao was rewarded with a spot in the World Championship qualifiers while still playing as an amateur, due to winning the Q Tour this season.
He subsequently progressed through all four rounds of qualifying, before defeating Jak Jones. Lei Peifan, Chris Wakelin and then Ronnie O'Sullivan at the Crucible to book a final spot against Williams.
He will now return to the main tour for the 2025/26 season.
Unlike other players promoted to the main tour, Zhao will keep the ranking money he earned during the 2025 World Championship stages.
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That is because, if a non-tour card holder ends the season in the top 64 of the rankings, they will be deemed as already professional and therefore allowed to start the 2025/26 season in their current ranking spot.
Had Zhao been even as high as 65th at the end of the tournament, he would have began next season on zero ranking points.
WPBSA chairman Jason Ferguson confirmed this while in an interview with BBC Sport on Sunday.
He will, in fact, start next season in 12th position, with his £500,000 earnings from the World Championship added to the £10,000 he earned from losing in the first round of the UK Championship to Shaun Murphy back in December.
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But current top 16 player Mark Allen questioned World Snooker's decision, claiming it contradicted what professionals were told at the beginning of the season surrounding top 64 players.
The reason Zhao has been entering events as an amateur player is because he had been serving a ban of 20 months from the World Snooker Tour up to September 2024.
The 28-year-old was involved in a match-fixing scandal that saw nine of the 10 players involved - who were all from China - found guilty of fixing or conspiring to fix at least one snooker match.
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Zhao was the only player to not have fixed or conspired to fix a match, with the new champion instead accepting the lesser charge of being a party to another player fixing two matches (being aware of a match being fixed) and betting on matches.
His rise back to the top of the sport has been unprecedented but not entirely unsurprising, as the Chinese star was comfortably positioned within the top 16 at the time of his initial provisional suspension in January 2023 and is a previous winner of the UK Championship.
Now, he will enter every major tournament this season as the second seed, as a result of winning the World Championship.
And he is guaranteed to stay in the top 16 for the whole campaign and beyond, as he is not 'defending' any ranking points on the two-year system.