John Higgins
Updated: Wikipedia source
John Higgins (born 18 May 1975) is a Scottish professional snooker player from Wishaw in North Lanarkshire. Since turning professional in 1992, he has won 33 ranking titles, placing him in third position on the all-time list of ranking event winners, behind Ronnie O'Sullivan (41) and Stephen Hendry (36). He has won four World Championships, three UK Championships and two Masters titles, for a total of nine Triple Crown titles, putting him level with Mark Selby and behind only O'Sullivan (23), Hendry (18) and Steve Davis (15). He first entered the top 16 in the 1995–96 world rankings and remained there continuously for over 29 years until September 2024, setting a record for the longest uninterrupted tenure as a top-16 player. He reached the world number one position four times. In 1994, two years after turning professional, Higgins won his first ranking event at the 1994 Grand Prix. He also won two more ranking events that season, the first teenager to win three ranking events in a single season. He reached his first Triple Crown final at the 1995 Masters losing to O'Sullivan, and then the 1996 UK Championship, losing on a deciding frame to Hendry. Two years later, at the 1998 World Snooker Championship, Higgins won his first World Championship, defeating Ken Doherty in the final. He won the UK Championship twice in 1998 and 2000 and the 1999 Masters before reaching the world championship final again at the 2001 World Snooker Championship, losing to O'Sullivan. Higgins won the World Championship again in 2007 and 2009, the UK Championship in 2009 and 2010 and the Masters in 2006. In 2010, a tabloid newspaper carried out a sting operation in Ukraine, in which it claimed to show Higgins and his then-manager arranging to lose specific frames in future matches for money. An investigation cleared Higgins of match-fixing allegations but the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association found that he had brought the sport into disrepute by failing to disclose an invitation to breach the sport's betting rules and giving the impression of agreeing to it. Higgins was banned from professional competition for six months and fined £75,000. After winning his fourth world title in 2011, Higgins' form became less consistent and he has gone for lengthy periods without title wins. He reached three consecutive World Championship finals between 2017 and 2019, but lost each time, to Selby in 2017, to Mark Williams in 2018, and to Judd Trump in 2019. In the 2021–22 season, he lost five ranking finals. In the 2024–25 snooker season, Higgins won two ranking events in the same season for the first time since 2015. Higgins made his 1,000th professional century break at the 2024 English Open, becoming the second player, after O'Sullivan, to reach that milestone. He has made 13 officially recognised maximum breaks in professional competition, second only to O'Sullivan's 17. He also holds the record for the biggest time span between a player's first and most recent ranking tournament win, having won his first ranking event at the 1994 Grand Prix and his latest at the 2025 Tour Championship, 30 years and 165 days later. Alongside O'Sullivan and Williams, he is one of the three players known as the "Class of '92", who all turned professional during the 1992–93 snooker season.