Jackson Page became the first snooker player to make two maximum 147 breaks in the same match and admitted he played for the second maximum before he had even potted a ball in the frame.
The 23-year-old Welshman recorded the first official 147 of his career on Sunday against England’s Allan Taylor in qualifying for the World Championship at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield and he returned on Monday to achieve perfection again in a 10-2 victory.
Page’s prize is £147,000 — given to any player who makes more than one maximum at Triple Crown events in a season — and he is in line for a further £25,000 if these remain the highest breaks of the World Championship. Victory in the final qualifying round on Wednesday against Joe O’Connor would give him a place in the first round of the main event at the Crucible, which starts on Saturday.
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“I’d usually go up to the blue on that first red, but I’ve played for the black deliberately to go for it,” Page, who is ranked No35 in the world, told The Times. “The second one was probably a little bit harder because of the shot I’ve had to play to get on the yellow.
“It was an insanely tough shot and I managed to pull it off. There weren’t really any shots like that in the first break.”
The breaks are the 215th and 216th on the list of official 147s, but represent the first time the feat has ever happened in the same match. In darts, Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen have thrown two perfect nine-darters in the same game.
Perfection is such a common occurrence away from the cameras that Page doesn’t count 147s. Though these were his first in official matches, how many does he have in practice at Mark Williams’s club in Tredegar? “Oh, loads,” Page said. “Including these two, I’ve probably had six in the past couple of weeks.
“One week you may have a few and you might have none the next week. I think it probably averages out, recently anyway, [at] one a week. Obviously in a tournament it’s a lot tougher because you don’t tend to go for it as often, but on a practice table we go for it more. It’s a lot easier.”
Page first emerged as a wild card at the 2017 Welsh Open when he was 15, reaching the third round. He lost his tour card in 2021 but regained it swiftly via Q School and reached a career-high ranking of No33 this season, having made it to the final of the Championship League and the quarter-finals of the International Championship and Welsh Open.
“I’ve been playing all right this year,” he said. “I just hope to keep it going for next year and obviously for the rest of this tournament as well.
“I’ve got a day off tomorrow now, which is probably a good thing. I’ll settle down a bit, have a bit of practice, and then I’ll go out again on Wednesday and try to qualify.”
This is the ninth time Page has entered the World Championship. He qualified for the Crucible in 2022 and beat Barry Hawkins in the first round before losing to Williams; he earned a first-round match against Ronnie O’Sullivan last year, losing 10-1.