Ostensibly, sport aims to answer one question: who is the best? Humans being humans, we naturally invest it with meaning beyond that – the teams we support are ours forever, a fixed part of our identity representing values and a way of life. We keep coming back because we have no choice.
Individual sports, though, are different, players necessarily transient, so what keeps us coming back is the competition itself. And for that reason, there is greater onus on it to provide a satisfying outcome: we want our world championships won by the best player in the world, and Kyren Wilson, snooker’s newly minted king – a terrific talent and worthy winner – is, on the face of it, no such thing.
This is a relatively new development. In the 1980s and 1990s, snooker was dominated first by Steve Davis then by Stephen Hendry, while darts had Eric Bristow and Phil Taylor. Fans tuned in to marvel at their epochal brilliance – likewise Tiger Woods in golf, Serena Williams in tennis and so on – but also to watch if someone could beat them, secure in the knowledge that if anyone did it was big news, and if no one did they received the certainty they were seeking. It was clean, it was compelling and it was absolute; it meant something.
