| Known as ‘The
Silver Fox’ due to his prematurely grey hair, David Taylor
was one of snooker’s ‘nearly men’, who, although
he was highly ranked for many years, never won a major professional
event.
He was brought up around the Manchester area and started
playing snooker at the age of 14 and quickly established himself
as a leading amateur. He was inspired by the success of another
local lad, John Spencer when he won the English Amateur title
in 1966 and David believed he could do, the same. Two years
later in 1968 he did just that beating Colin Ross 11-8 in
the final. This victory meant he could enter the World Amateur
Championship in Sydney which he did and returned as champion
after a narrow 8-7 victory over Australian, Max Williams.
On his return form Australia, he turned professional bur
found success hard to come by and he struggled to make a living
till he joined the holiday camp circuit in the mid 1970s.
His first World Championship was in 1970 when he reached the
quarter-finals. He did not travel to the next championship
in Australia but in 1972 he was seeded into the quarter-finals
where he lost and from then on he did not get beyond the last
16 until 1980.
In 1978 came probably his best result as a professional when
he reached the UK final, eventually losing to Doug Mountjoy
15-9. In 1980 he reached is only world semi-final and the
following season he was runner-up in the Yamaha International
Masters invitational event. He reached his only final of a
world ranking event in 1982 when Tony Knowles beat him 9-6
in The Jameson International. These were to prove to be the
best few years of his career.
He spent ten consecutive seasons in the top 16 ranked players
up to the end of the 1985/86 season and made two appearances
in the England World Cup team, first in 1980 and then in the
1891 winning side. He was also in great demand on the exhibition
circuit.
From the mid 1980s he began to slide down the rankings and
the last time he got past the qualifying stages of a ranking
event was in the 1992/93 season and he last played the main
tour in 1996/97.
If the seniors tour gets going, we may well see more of him
as he still plays to a high standard and reached the semi-finals
of the inaugural World Seniors Masters in 2000.
|
