{"id":481,"date":"2022-03-23T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.solutions\/snooker\/legend\/ray-reardon\/"},"modified":"2022-03-23T12:06:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T12:06:32","slug":"ray-reardon","status":"publish","type":"legend","link":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/legend\/ray-reardon\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Reardon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Raymond Reardon<\/strong>,&nbsp;MBE&nbsp;is a Welsh retired professional&nbsp;snooker&nbsp;player. He turned professional in 1967 at the age of 35 before going on to dominate the sport in the 1970s, winning the&nbsp;World Snooker Championship&nbsp;on six occasions, and more than a dozen other tournaments. He was world champion in&nbsp;1970,&nbsp;1973,&nbsp;1974,&nbsp;1975,&nbsp;1976&nbsp;and&nbsp;1978, and runner-up in the&nbsp;1982&nbsp;event. He won the inaugural&nbsp;<em>Pot Black<\/em>&nbsp;tournament in&nbsp;1969, the&nbsp;1976 Masters&nbsp;and the&nbsp;1982 Professional Players Tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He was the first&nbsp;number one ranked player&nbsp;when world rankings were introduced in the&nbsp;1976\u201377 season, holding the top ranking position for the next five years. He regained the number one ranking in&nbsp;1982, but his form declined thereafter and he dropped out of the elite top-16 ranked players after the&nbsp;1986\u201387 season. He retired from the professional game in 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reardon remained one of snooker&#8217;s top players into his 50s, setting a number of records. He became snooker&#8217;s oldest World champion (in 1978, aged 45 years and 203 days), and the oldest player to win a ranking event (in 1982, aged 50 years and 14 days). His highest&nbsp;<dfn>break<\/dfn>&nbsp;in competition was 146. He also worked with&nbsp;Ronnie O&#8217;Sullivan&nbsp;in a coaching role, helping him to win the&nbsp;2004 World Snooker Championship. Reardon&#8217;s dark&nbsp;widow&#8217;s peak&nbsp;and sharp-toothed grin earned him the nickname &#8220;Dracula&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":517,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-481","legend","type-legend","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/legend\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/legend"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/legend"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}