About Us

Born in 1983, ‘The Magician’ Shaun Murphy is a top-class snooker player who impresses snooker fans around the globe with his straight cue action and seriously long potting. He has won many tournaments, including the World Championships. Here at shaun-murphy.co.uk we are going to be looking at his life, his career and everything Shaun Murphy related.

We are here to celebrate the awesome career and skills of this amazing English player. We’ll check out his playing styles, performance and rankings. Simply put, we’re going to provide you with all that you need to know about this magic man.

His Life

Shaun Murphy was born on August 10, 1982 in Harlow. He was raised in Irthlingborough and began playing snooker at the tender age of just 8 years old, when his parents bought him a snooker table for Christmas.

The child prodigy made his first century break at just 10-years-old and his talent was spotted. He began his real practice when he joined the Rushden Snooker Centre, which has hosted other greats such as Stephen Hendry, Mark Williams and Ken Docherty. At just 13 years old he managed to bag himself a 5-year £5,000 a year sponsorship deal with Doc Martins. He then turned his eye to winning the World Championships and becoming the world number one.

He turned professional at just 15 years old and was coached by Steve Prest. However, it wasn’t long before he caught the eye of other professionals and was given guidance by Willie Thorne and Ray Reardon.

His Career

His career really began when he went on the UK Tour in 1998. He started well, earning the runners up place in the fourth event on the tour. In the 2001/2002 season he won the third and fourth events on the tour and topped the Order of Merit Rankings.

He was making his mark, and in 2000 he received the World Snooker Newcomer of the Year award. As well as this, in that very same year he won the English Open Championship.

This was a great year for Murphy as he went on to win his first professional tournament at the 2000 Benson & Hedges Championship. This win earned him qualification to the Masters. He may not have won, but he showed great promise and even held a lead over Stephen Hendry for a time.

It wasn’t long before his rankings started going up and up. For the 2003/2004 season, he was ranked at number 64. However, after several successes in games against some top players, including Steve Davis he went up the ladder and was ranked number 48 for the 2004/2005 season.

Hitting the Big Time

His career really took off in 2005 when he won 2 qualifying matches for the 2005 World Championship. Much to the surprise of everyone, including Shaun himself, he defeated Higgins, Peter Ebdon and world Number 6, Matthew Stevens to win the tournament. Before the tournament, the odds of him winning were 150-1.

He became only the third qualifier to win the World Championship. At 22, he was also the second youngest player to win the tournament after Hendry who won it at 21. It was his run in this tournament that earned him the nickname ‘The Magician’ which has magically stuck.

This success saw his ranking fly up to number 21. Although this wasn’t usually good enough to automatically qualify for ranking event tournaments, because of his win at the World Championship he automatically qualified for every tournament as number 2 seed.

Unfortunately, his success in 2005 was not repeated in any of the tournaments immediately after. In the non-ranking Norther Ireland Trophy, he only made it to the quarter finals. In the first 3 ranking events he managed to reach the last 16. He then managed to get through to the finals in the revival of the Pot Black tournament.

Since his success in 2005 he has gone on to win many titles. Although 2006 was quiet in terms of wins, he hit a win again in 2007 when he played the Malta Cup. Then in 2008 he again won the Malta Cup as well as the UK Championship and Paul Hunter Classic. 2009 was another good year for him when he won 3 titles, including the Paul Hunter Classic again, the World Series Grand Final and was the Premier League Winner.

He has since showed no signs of slowing down and has won titles every year, except from 2010. His victories include: PTC players Tour Championship Finals; Gdynia Open; Haikou World Open; Victoria Bulgarian Open; Kreativ Dental Ruhr Open; Dafabet Masters; World Grand Prix and most recently the Gibraltar Open, sponsored by https://notongamstop.info.

His Life off the Table

Although snooker is a massive part of his life, there are other facets to Shaun Murphy. He is keen on golf and enjoys both watching and playing the game. There was a point in his teenage years when he considered switching from snooker to golf, but he decided that his skills on the baize were more likely to earn him success.

Away from the sporting arena, Shaun is fond of playing the piano. Although he doesn’t consider himself a classical pianist by any means, he likes to tinkle the ivories with pop songs by Elton John and The Beatles.

Like most people, he is very close to his family and likes spending a lot of time with family and friends. In fact, his 2 nephews are embarking on snooker careers of their own, so with Uncle Shaun’s guidance it will be interesting to see where the future takes them.

Shaun Murphy is a man who cares very much about his game and about the life he leaves. With a hugely successful career that is still going, a top-ranking of 3 and a family just waiting to carry on his legacy, there’s still a lot more to come.