Fred Davis

Fred Davis (14 August 1913 – 16 April 1998) was an English professional player of snooker and English billiards. He was an eight-time World Snooker Championship winner from 1948 to 1956, and a two-time winner of the World Billiards Championship. He was the brother of 15-time world snooker champion Joe Davis; the pair were the only two players to win both snooker and English billiards world championships, and Fred is second on the list of those holding most world snooker championship titles, behind Joe. Davis' professional career started in 1929 at the age of 15 as a billiards player. He competed in his first world snooker championship in 1937 and reached the final three years later, losing to Joe by 36–37. From 1947, Davis played in five straight finals against Scottish player Walter Donaldson, winning three. When the event merged into the World Professional Match-play Championship in 1952, Davis won five more championships, defeating Donaldson three times and then John Pulman twice. Davis won the World Billiards championship twice in 1980, defeating Rex Williams in the May event, and later Mark Wildman in the November event. With the beginning of the snooker world rankings in 1976, Davis was ranked fourth in the world, and remained on the professional tour until 1993 when, aged 80, he retired due to arthritis in his left knee. He died in 1998 after a fall in his home in Denbighshire, Wales. Early life Fred Davis was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire on 14 August 1913, the youngest of six children of coalminer-turned-pub landlord Fred Davis and his wife Ann-Eliza. His snooker-playing brother Joe, 12 years his senior, was the eldest of the six siblings. Joe actively discouraged Fred's professional ambitions, telling Fred that he was not good enough to pursue a professional career. Fred learned to play on a miniature table, a Christmas gift from his parents. Fred instead played English billiards which he later called "his first love", and he won the British Boys Under-16 Billiards Championship in 1929. In 1929, he turned professional automatically under the rules of the Billiards Association and Control Council. By the time he was ready to play competitive billiards, the sport was in sharp decline, although he did defeat Kingsley Kennerley to win the United Kingdom Professional Billiards Championship in 1951. Davis remarked that, once snooker had come to the fore, he assumed he would never play another billiards match.