The 1998 World Snooker Championship (also referred to as the 1998 Embassy World Snooker Championship for the purposes of sponsorship) was a professional rankingsnooker tournament that took place between 18 April and 4 May 1998 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.
John Higgins won his first World title by defeating defending champion Ken Doherty 18–12 in the final. Doherty became another World Champion who fell to the Crucible curse and could not defend his first World title. However, Doherty has come closer than any other first-time champion bar Joe Johnson to retaining his championship. The tournament was sponsored by cigarette manufacturer Embassy.
Tournament summary
Stephen Hendry lost in the first round 4–10 to Jimmy White. It was the first time since his debut in 1986 that he lost in the last 32 and it was also the first quarter-final stage not to feature Hendry since 1988.[1]
The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:[10][11][13]
Winner: £220,000
Runner-up: £132,000
Semi-final: £66,000
Quarter-final: £33,000
Last 16: £17,750
Last 32: £12,000
Highest break £19,000
Maximum break £147,000
Total £1,323,000
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).[10][11][14][15]
There were 59 century breaks in the championship, a new record which would last until 2002.[10][17][18] John Higgins' 14 centuries in the tournament was a new record, beating the 12 made by Stephen Hendry in 1995.[19]
^Eric, Hayton (2004). The CueSport Book of Professional Snooker: The Complete Record & History. London: Rose Villa Publications. ISBN978-0-9548549-0-4.