The long-held image of snooker as a game played in smoke-filled working men’s clubs has discouraged most British women from taking up the sport.
Emerging through the haze, though, is Reanne Evans, a trailblazer for the women’s game who is looking to achieve a unique feat in snooker’s male-dominated environs.
Evans, who has won the last 10 women’s world titles, will take part in qualifying for the men’s world championship today. Three wins, and she will become the first female to reach snooker’s biggest stage at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, northern England.
She has been drawn to face former world champion Ken Doherty in the first qualifying round. Doherty, 45, won the tournament in 1997, but the world No 43 has not reached the third round since 2006.
“Obviously, I’ve had to get over the sexism barrier,” Evans said in a break from a practice session. “I don’t think the past has helped women get involved in snooker but hopefully with all the opportunities that we now have, it’ll bring more into the game.”
The obstacles are still there. Evans says she has been prevented from playing in some of Britain’s snooker halls, and once got a male referee from New Zealand thrown out of a tournament for saying women should not be playing.
They are rare occurrences, but she often encounters prejudiced attitudes among snooker followers.
“You don’t think things like that happen in this day and age, but it does happen, and is still out there,” Evans said.
It is the social and cultural environment in which snooker is played that appears to have stopped women from rising to the top.
Because unlike other sports where physicality is crucial, snooker is about technique and hand-to-eye co-ordination. Gender should not come into it.
There is nothing to stop women from playing on snooker’s male professional circuit, but there simply are not enough willing to give it a go. Evans is the exception.
She struggles to hold down a living from just competing in women’s events, in which she is undefeated this season. When she won her eighth world title in 2012, she collected a top prize of £450 (Dh2,470) – the men’s champion that year, Ronnie O’Sullivan, pocketed £250,000.
Now 29, she still lives at home with her parents and her daughter, 9. She does not earn enough money from snooker to get her own place.
“I was thinking of getting a part-time job but who is going to give you the time off to practice?” she said. “There aren’t many jobs that will give you the time off that you need to travel and play the events. It’s a catch-22 situation. You either play or you don’t.”
She counts five-time world champion O’Sullivan as an inspiration and says tennis player Serena Williams is her role model: “She’s a machine at what she does. She doesn’t care what anybody thinks. She just does her thing.”
Evans’s progress has been hailed by Jason Ferguson, chairman of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), who hopes it will be a catalyst for other women.
Her appearance in a world championship would also provide a huge boost to the profile of snooker at a time when officials of cue sports are looking to get them included in the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020.
“It’s obviously going to help because if it’s going to be in the Olympics, you need both male and female competitors,” Evans said. “It’s exciting. Not everybody gets this opportunity so you have to grab it when it comes along. I just hope I can win a match or two, or maybe three.”
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