EXCLUSIVE: Welsh snooker star Jak Jones explains his quiet season and why he believes he can repeat his Crucible heroics of 2024 when he reached the final
Jak Jones is ready to shock the world again.
His 2024/25 results don’t suggest another run to the World Snooker Championship final is on the cards, but neither did his form before last year’s tournament, which saw him dump out Judd Trump in the last eight and then push Kyren Wilson hard in the finale.
The combination of the Crucible and the long format of the Worlds is relished by Jones, who is no fan of the quick-fire best-of-seven formula used in the early rounds of some tournaments.
“I feel like a different player at the World Championship. I’ve already started practising and preparing, which I don’t normally do this early,” he told us a month before the tournament.
“It (reaching the final last year) didn’t surprise me. I feel confident in my ability, I just haven’t shown it on the tour. A lot of tournaments, they’re the best of seven and best of nine. At this level they are lotteries, I believe.
“It’s probably something mental with me that best of sevens aren’t my best format. Maybe I just take time to settle, which I need to try and sort out.
“At the World Championship, it’s completely different. There are no advantages for players in terms of table set-up. Half the draw is played on one table, half the draw is played on the other.
“It’s a long format, you’ve got time to get into it. I feel I’ve got a better chance of winning over the longer format. I feel my natural game will come out more in a longer match. With a best of seven, it’s over before you’ve started.
“At the Worlds, it’s more fair than any other tournament and you’ve got more chance of accurate results. That’s what I think anyway.”
Jones’ quiet 2024/25 can be attributed in part to off-the-table worries as he and his wife welcomed their first child, a boy called Harri, into the world. The 31-year-old admits he has found himself not wanting to attend tournaments for much of the season.
“My wife’s pregnancy was stressful, so snooker wasn’t the first thing on my mind,” he says. “When you’ve got things going on like that off the table, it’s hard to focus on the table.
“I’ve spent pretty much the whole season not wanting to go to tournaments. But I feel really good now. The baby is good, it’s all positive about the future.”
While Jones could be proud of his Crucible campaign last year, there was a tinge of regret about the final. A slow start, which left him trailing 7-1 after the first session, ultimately proved decisive as he lost 18-14 after a stirring fightback.
“It’s easy to say ‘if this happened’ or ‘if that happened’, but it feels like the one that got away,” he reflects. “I feel like I could have won the final but that first session cost me.”
He went into his maiden world final following a late-night finish to his semi-final victory over Stuart Bingham, whereas Wilson concluded his semi in the afternoon. Jones recalls: “I didn’t feel like I was going into a world final. I finished so late and then you have to go into two hours of interviews.
“You have come down from a big semi-final at 1am or 2am in the morning, then you’re back up to start the final at 1pm. It’s not easy. I didn’t feel like I was there in the first session.”
The tournament was still an overwhelming success for Jones, but the biggest payday of his career (£200,000) and the extra attention was never going to change the grounded Welshman. He insists he merely delivered on his promise and years of hard work.
“It didn’t change things at all,” he insists. “Because I’ve played the game all day every day from the age of 10 or 11… If I’d been watching on TV, I would have thinking, ‘That’s amazing’. But once I’d actually done it, it didn’t feel that out of the ordinary. It was a different feeling to what I had expected.
“Getting called down those stairs into the arena was a real buzz. But I felt like it was something I should have been doing anyway. It’s when you don’t do it, that’s the problem! You’re asking yourself, ‘What’s wrong?’.”
Jones used some of his runner-up winnings to treat his parents to a couple of holidays as a small thank you for their instrumental role in his career. Getting on the tour for the first time at the age of just 16 was an exciting yet daunting prospect for Jones, who felt under pressure to deliver straight away.
“Playing on the tour is not cheap,” he says. “Especially when you’re from a hardworking, working-class family with brothers and sisters.
“When I was first on the tour, I was only 16. There were a lot of PTCs (Players Tour Championship events) but with very minimal prize money. The expense was more than the prize money would pay. And my parents would come with me because I was so young, so the expense was massive.
“I was playing against seasoned professionals and I didn’t deal with it. I would worry about my parents spending money on me to play and would put a lot of pressure on myself.
“Although my parents did everything to take the pressure off me, I knew what was going on. I felt like I had to win just to pay them back. That’s why I always mention them because I know the struggle they went through. I wouldn’t be where I am without them.”
