Conor McKeown

decides to go for anything else.

I remember somebody in here did a piece about one of the Healy Rays or maybe both of the Healy Rays and went back through some of their days in office and it consisted of driving up to Dublin to check in so you get your expenses and then driving back to, like there was a funeral in Cullaraglan and that was

Yeah, I think the most interesting thing to take away from this world championship is the degree to which the crowd did get behind.

Like, not the player that we expected in the world final.

And I think it's because, like, you know, this is a big thing in sports and it was a thing that happened in women's golf in particular when you have, like, there's 11 Chinese players in this year's world championship and Wu Yi doesn't speak English.

And so it can be hard to kind of put your personality across

when you're off the table.

But snooker is one of these sports where like the vast majority of why you like players is because of what they do on the table.

That's when their personality comes across in terms of the kind of shots they take on and everything else.

And it's really interesting because I remember one of the chapters of Shane Ryan's book, Slaying the Tiger, was about Hideki Matsuyama.

And he was talking about Y.E.

Yang, the Korean who won the 2009 PGA.

And he says it kind of poses a problem for like what is essentially a very American centric audience when you have this personality who doesn't kind of communicate with what is the biggest part of the audience.

And I was watching out for that in this year's world championship as well.

You know, the world championship is in Sheffield.

It's a very Anglo speaking centric sport, generally speaking, but clearly there's a new kind of strength and base.

And I can only assume that the kind of viewership in China is going to kind of reflect that.

But what you don't always expect is that the kind of the crowd who are there, the hardcourt snooker fans who are mostly English, are going to get behind the Chinese player in the final.

But I remember, I know this is only kind of sort of peripherally related, but I was talking to an American golf journalist recently enough about Nellie Carter, and he was talking about how important she was kind of for the TV audience of women's golf in the States, because that's where the majority of the commercial revenue is still coming.

And there was a period there in the 2010s when it looked like golf was going to become completely...