Judd Trump has won the 2024 UK Championship which is the 5th Triple Crown title of his career. Does that make him a GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) in men’s Snooker? Using the criteria I recommend in this article, Trump will become a GOAT if he wins another World Championship.
The Triple Crown of Snooker
The three tournaments which make up Snooker’s Triple Crown are –
- World Championship – which takes place in April and early May
- The Masters – which takes place in January
- UK Championship – which takes place in November
Using the Wikipedia links above, I’ve created a spreadsheet listing of all winners, runner ups and semi finalists (world championship only) since 1969 which can be downloaded here Snooker – Triple Crowns – Men – 2024 – v1.0. It is up to date as of December 2024. The spreadsheet has a number of worksheets and I will briefly describe two of them now.
TRIPLECROWNS
The listing of winners, runner-ups, etc can be found on the TRIPLECROWNS worksheet and reproduced below. The reason I start the list in 1969 is that is when the modern world championship tournament format began and it was followed by the birth of the Masters in 1975 and the UK Championship in 1977 to complete the Triple Crown set.
Each player is colour coded by nationality and a list of all 57 players shown can be found in column R of TRIPLECROWNS. In cell M1, you can select a specific player using the dropdown list who will then be highlighted in the listing in a metallic green shade.
RANKINGS
Here you can sort and rank the 57 players shown in TRIPLECROWNS. You can sort for individual tournaments or by summary statistics across all Triple Crowns. Each tournament is denoted with a shorthand with W for World Championship, M for Masters and UK for UK Championship.
There are four summary statistics to choose from –
- Wins – Number of Triple Crowns won.
- Finals – Number of Triple Crown finals played in.
- PointsAll – Number of Triple Crown points won. The points values for each outcome can be entered in the yellow cells in row 1 of RANKINGS.
- PointsEra – Number of points won within a certain time period. The start and end years of this period can be entered in cells P1 & Q1.
The example ranking shown below is for the top 20 players based on the PointsAll column using the points values shown in the yellow cells.
What makes a GOAT?
Four names should immediately leap to the mind of any snooker fan; Ray Reardon who dominated the 70s, Steve Davis who dominated the 80s, Stephen Hendry who dominated the 90s and Ronnie O’Sullivan who has dominated the 21st century so far. Each has 
won at least 6 world championships but who comes after them?
23 players have won the World Championship in its modern format since 1969. Of these, only 9 have won it at least twice as shown in the table here. I take the view that GOATs should be winning the World Championship multiple times so these 9 are our first contenders for GOAThood.
The World Championship is the summit of snooker but GOATs should be winning the other triple crowns as well. Judd Trump has just won his 5th Triple Crown making him the 10th player of all time to reach this milestone. 8 of his predecessors also appear in the World Championship table above with John Spencer the only one not making the leap. The one player not in the World Championship list but is in the Triple Crown list is Neil Robertson who has won 6 Triple Crowns.
Are there other players who reach finals but struggle to win tournaments? The next table lists 9 players who have played in at least 10 Triple Crown 
finals. By now, you should notice the same 8 players who appear in all three tables shown so far. The 9th player in the Finals list is the unfortunate Jimmy White who played and lost 4 World Championship finals to Stephen Hendry in the 1990s. Judd Trump and Neil Robertson do not appear in the Finals list and neither does John Spencer.
The last table I show below lists the 12 players who have earned at least 25 Triple Crown points in their career. This table captures all 12 players mentioned in the other three tables above. The points values I’ve used here are the ones shown earlier when I explained the RANKINGS worksheet i.e. 3 points for winning a triple crown, 1 point for being runner up, double points for World Championship i.e. 6 and 2, where I also give 1 point for reaching the semi final.
The 8 GOATS of men’s Snooker
To me, the definition of a GOAT can be built using intuitive round numbers as below –
- 2 or more World Championship Titles
- 5 or more Triple Crown Titles
- 10 or more appearances in Triple Crown Finals
- 30 or more Triple Crown Points using the points values I’ve shown so far.
Since 1969, 8 players have met all four criteria. I doubt there will be any dispute these 8 are genuine GOATS of men’s Snooker.
At the beginning, I listed Reardon, Davis, Hendry and O’Sullivan as obvious GOATs due to their dominance of the World Championship. However, when sorted by points, Reardon ends up in 6th place instead of the top 4. This is because Ray Reardon, Alex Higgins and John Spencer all played in the 70s, a decade which began with only one Triple Crown tournament. Naturally this limits the opportunity for these three to earn Triple Crown Points. It does not stop Reardon and Alex Higgins from exceeding the GOAT threshold but Spencer misses out, a point I will return to in the next section.
Who will be the next GOAT?
Of the players still playing, I see 3 candidates for future GOAThood. Judd Trump and Neil Robertson have already been mentioned and the third somewhat long shot candidate is Shaun Murphy.
All three have won a World Championship but differ in what they need to do next to reach my definition of a GOAT.
- Judd Trump just(!) needs to win another World Championship which would automatically give him 10 finals and 30+ points in addition to the 5 Triple Crowns he already has.
- Neil Robertson needs to win another World Championship and reach another Triple Crown final. He already has 6 Triple Crowns to his name.
- Shaun Murphy needs to win 2 more Triple Crowns, one of which needs to be the World Championship. Given it’s been 10 years since he last won a Triple Crown, I suspect this is not going to happen.
What about John Spencer? His 3 World titles clearly means he has the pedigree of a GOAT but as noted earlier, being a star in the 70s limited his opportunities for the other Triple Crowns. The question is what would he have achieved had all 3 triple crowns been played for the full decade? Would he have played in 5 more finals and won at least one of them? I think a case can be made he would have done this which is why I ask if he should be regarded as an honorary GOAT of men’s snooker.
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