With a pounding heart, can that last ball still be pocketed? The Belgian Luca Brecel became snooker world champion

Just after ten o’clock on Monday evening, it falls silent in the Crucible Theater in Sheffield, the temple of snooker for almost fifty years, when the Belgian Luca Brecel (28) moors for the most important moment of his career. If he pots the pink ball and then secures a good starting position with the white ball so that he can also hit the red ball, his opponent will not be able to catch up with him in this decisive frame. Then he becomes world champion. As the first Belgian ever.

As he slides chalk over the top of his cue to provide extra grip on the ball, his eyes don’t leave the table for a second. He knows what to do. Where he should hit the cue ball, how hard exactly, and with what effect. What’s going on in his head? With a pounding heart in his throat, is there even room to allow thoughts? He probably switches to instinct, falls back on movements that he has carved into his system for almost twenty years, repeating them hundreds of thousands of times and under all circumstances. Until perfection became automatic.

Perhaps the long road to this moment will pass in short flashes. Does he see himself standing again, the nine-year-old boy who exchanged the local football club of Dilsen-Stokkem in Belgian Limburg for a cue and a few balls, and could be found every Saturday in Genk at snooker club Riley Inn in no time. The kid who, barely a year old, already managed to win a regional men’s tournament, who became the youngest European snooker champion in the category under nineteen at the age of fourteen, and a year later the youngest Belgian champion in history.

It had never happened until April 2012 that a minor boy qualified for the snooker World Cup, but Luca Brecel did. It would only be a matter of time before the child prodigy actually became the best snooker player in the world, although Brecel was close to quitting snooker for financial reasons. His parents did years ago on the TV show The Seventh Day a call to sponsors to assist them, whereupon companies approached them.

Captured by the promise

But somehow he failed to live up to expectations on the top podium afterwards, as if he were caught up in his own promise. He often put players aside in the preliminary rounds of the World Cup with his almost nonchalant, aggressive game, but when it really mattered, he tensed up. Until this year knew Luca Brecel, nickname The Belgian Bullet, never to win a single match at a World Cup. But this time, in his sixth World Cup participation, everything changed.

In the first round he defeated the British Ricky Walden, once a semi-finalist at the World Cup, but that was not easy. When that succeeded, partly due to a tactical miss by Walden, Brecel hit the edge of the snooker table with his fist in pure relief. Afterwards, he surprised when he said that he had not trained more than fifteen minutes in the weeks leading up to this World Cup, because he “didn’t feel like playing anymore”. Instead, he had “drinked a lot and played FIFA”. He agreed that with that unorthodox preparation he may have kept the pressure at bay. The British press immediately spoke, also because of the many tattoos on his hands and arms, of ‘snooker’s new rock star’.

Also in the run-up to the round of 16 against triple world champion Mark Williams, who has already played 25 times at the World Cup in his career, Brecel kept that relaxation. He did not train for a minute again, but instead decided to play some darts and hang out with his friends and family. After the game had ended, he had become ‘deep drunk’ and had only returned to Belgium from England at 7 o’clock in the morning. To drive back to Sheffield the next day.

Brecel then played British legend Ronnie O’Sullivan, seven-time world champion, in the quarter-final, according to snooker commentators, the match of his life.

O’Sullivan, who would have become the record holder with an eighth world title, took a 10-6 lead against Brecel, but was then outclassed by the Belgian’s risky play and still lost the match. The British press spoke of one comeback kingafter which he also managed to turn around and win the match in the semifinals against the young Chinese Si Jiahui (20).

“I hope Luca will also become world champion,” said O’Sullivan with admiration. “I’ve been playing snooker for so long, but I’ve never seen anyone hit the ball as well as he does. He throws so much action into his game. Okay, he misses sometimes, but if you can play like him, why not go for those tricky shots?

Relatively everything

In interviews with Eurosport last week Brecel referred more than once to the mental growth he has experienced in recent seasons. Nowadays, while waiting in the chair next to the snooker table, he is able to “put everything into perspective” and “focus on myself”. Then he says inside that he still has a long career ahead of him. And that losing an opponent doesn’t have to mean the end of the world. Because of all the sporting setbacks, he didn’t have to win at all costs. And that’s exactly why it worked. „Fail to prepare, prepare to succeed” became his motto at this World Cup.

In the final, Luca Brecel competed against the British Mark Selby, four-time snooker world champion and crowd favorite at the Crucible Theater on Sunday. But there was little to see from the Belgian’s hesitation. In a best of 35 he quickly steamed through to a 6-2 lead, but gave it away just as quickly in the sessions that followed. With a rare break of 147 points, the maximum score in snooker, Selby brought the tension back on Sunday night.

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On Monday afternoon it became clear once again how mentally exhausting such a marathon snooker game is, because after Brecel quickly took a 15-10 lead and it looked like he would soon become world champion, Selby suddenly got the upper hand again. Brecel lost five frames in a row. “I did not narrowly miss, but with large margins,” Brecel looked back. “I really saw no way to win anymore. Nothing felt right anymore, both in my arms and in my head.” He admitted that the pressure of winning the World Cup, for Europe, for Belgium, took his breath away. In the mini-break that followed, he couldn’t get another word out of his mouth. “Everything was shaking in my body.”

And yet, just after ten o’clock on Monday evening, with the score 15-17 in frames and 69 points to 0 for Mark Selby, he takes the all-decisive shot. He has recovered, as so often this tournament. A pink and a red ball still separate him from the world title.

When he knows how he will hit the balls, he hinges his upper body and leans forward halfway up the left side of the table, level with the center pocket, on his outstretched left arm. He spreads the tattooed fingers – FREE BIRD reads on them – of his left hand for support on the sheep’s wool snooker cloth and lets the cue slide loosely over his thumb and forefinger. His eyes dart back and forth from the ball to the right-back pocket. Three times he moves the cue to the cue ball, then takes the shot; tick-tock, otherwise it’s quiet in the Crucible Theater. While pink rolls towards pocket, Brecel remains motionless.

When the ball falls in and white rolls away favorably, the audience cheers, his eyes close and all the tension finally flows out of his body. Luca Brecel from Dilsen-Stokkem is snooker world champion. As the first European from the mainland.

At the tribute and words of praise from Mark Selby, Brecel bursts into tears, under the watchful eye of his parents, brother and girlfriend in the room. “What a crazy week this was,” he says to the Belgian channel VTM. Not training, but partying. That really shouldn’t be legal. I’m finished, now I’m going to enjoy being together with family and friends.” He hopes to inspire Belgian children with his world title. “Because snooker is not boring.”