Ken Doherty

Ken Doherty

Doherty at the 2012 Paul Hunter Classic
Born	(1969-09-17) 17 September 1969 (age 55) Ranelagh, County Dublin, Ireland
Sport country	Ireland
Nickname	The Darlin' of Dublin[1] Crafty Ken[2]
Professional	1990–
Highest ranking	2 (2006/07)
Current ranking	122 (as of 11 November 2024)
Maximum breaks	1
Century breaks	358 (as of 18 November 2024)
Tournament wins
Ranking	6
World Champion	1997

Ken Doherty (born 17 September 1969) is an Irish professional snooker player from Ranelagh in Dublin. He is the sport's only world champion from the Republic of Ireland, having won the title in 1997, making him one of just four players from outside the United Kingdom—in addition to Cliff Thorburn from Canada, Neil Robertson from Australia, and Luca Brecel from Belgium—to have won the World Snooker Championship in the sport's modern era. He combines his ongoing playing career with regular commentary and punditry work on televised snooker broadcasts.

After moving from Dublin to London to pursue his snooker career, Doherty won the World Under-21 Amateur Championship and the World Amateur Championship in 1989. He turned professional the following year and reached the first of his 17 ranking finals at the 1992 Grand Prix, losing 9–10 to Jimmy White. He won the first of his six ranking titles several months later at the 1993 Welsh Open, beating Alan McManus 9–7 in the final, which helped him enter the top 16 for the first time in the 1993–94 world rankings. At the 1997 World Snooker Championship, he ended Stephen Hendry's record 29-match winning streak at the Crucible with an 18–12 victory in the final. He remains the only player to have won world titles at under-21, amateur, and professional levels.

Doherty has been runner-up at two other World Championships. As defending champion at the 1998 event, he came close to breaking the Crucible curse but lost the final 12–18 to John Higgins. Facing Mark Williams in the 2003 final, he recovered from 2–10 behind to tie the scores at 11–11 but lost 16–18. In other Triple Crown events, he has been UK Championship runner-up three times (losing 5–10 to Hendry in 1994, 1–10 to Ronnie O'Sullivan in 2001, and 9–10 to Williams in 2002) and Masters runner-up twice (losing 8–10 to Higgins in 1999 and by the same score to Matthew Stevens in 2000).

Doherty won his most recent ranking title at the 2006 Malta Cup, where he defeated Higgins 9–8 in the final; he achieved his career highest ranking of second in the 2006/2007 rankings. After 15 consecutive seasons within the top 16, he fell to 18th place in the 2008/2009 rankings and 44th place in the 2009/2010 rankings, after which he has never regained his top-16 standing. Since the end of the 2016–17 season, he has finished outside the top 64 in the world rankings multiple times; he has remained on the professional tour though invitational tour cards, the most recent of which was issued in June 2024 for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 seasons.^[3] Doherty also competes on the World Seniors Tour, where he won the 2018 UK Seniors Championship and has twice been runner-up at the World Seniors Championship, in 2020 and 2024. Since 2012, he has been a director of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association; he also served from 2021 to 2024 as inaugural chair of the WPBSA Players organisation.^[4]