Talk:Patsy Fagan
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The career of Patsy Fagan was one of great open, some moments of triumph and a general feeling of unfulfilled promise. It is also, unfortunately, highlighted as one of the most publicised cases of snooker's version of the golfing 'yips' where a psychological problem made it extremely difficult for Fagan to push the cue forward when using the rest.
Patsy Fagan was born in 1951 on the outskirts of Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. Fagan took up snooker at an early age and by 1973 he considered that his game was sharp enough to move to London. Fagan began playing the UK's leading amateurs including John Virgo, Willie Thorne, Jim Meadowcroft and Ray Edmonds.
By establishing himself in the UK (Clapham, South London) Fagan quickly built up a reputation of one of the amateur circuit's outstanding players (an this was at a time when the amateur circuit was thriving and entry to the professional ranks heavily constrained). Although Fagan did not lift either his native Republic of Ireland amateur championship or the highly regarded English Amateur Championship, Fagan did well in a variety of smaller tournaments, played in several international team matches and was marked as a very capable money match player against both leading amateurs and professionals. Fagan's best run in the English Amateur was to reach the 1974 final where he lost to Ray Edmonds
Fagan turned professional in 1977 and made a rapid start. Patsy won the first major tournament he entered - the inaugural United Kingdom Championship. His win, when coupled with the meteoritic rise of another leading amateur Doug Mountjoy who won the B&H Masters, showed how close leading amateurs were in ability to the relatively closed ranks of the professionals. Fagan scored victories over Jack Rea (5-1); Fred Davis (5-0); Jim Meadowcroft (5-4) and John Virgo (9-8) before he sealed his UK triumph at Blackpool Tower Circus by beating Mountjoy 12-9 in the final and scooped the winner's cheque of £2,000.
Pasty used his UK triumph as a springboard. He won a four-man tournament at Wembley Conference Centre a few weeks later by beating both John Spencer and Alex Higgins (both 4-2) to scoop a second £2,000 prize. In 1978 Patsy won another invitational tournament in Ipswich (by beating Alex Higgins 7-3 in the final) and went to qualify for the World Professional Championship. Before the championship proper Fagan challenged Alex Higgins for the Irish Professional title but was easily beaten 21-12 in a match where Higgins made a 122 break in two minutes, forty-five seconds.
Fagan went onto reach the quarter-finals of the championship with a daring 13-12 victory over Alex Higgins. Fagan had been 10-12 down to Higgins before two successive black ball games brought him level, and then a pink ball success clinched victory. Disappointment followed in quarter-finals where Fagan lost to Fred Davis 13-10 but he his achievements established him as 11th in the world rankings.
The pressures of moving from a leading amateur to a star player of the late 1970s got the better of Patsy as he went tamely out in his first round defence of his UK title to David Taylor (9-7) and this was followed by an event which led to a rapid decline in his game and his confidence. Patsy was involved in a car accident in 1979 from which he survived without any lasting physical difficulty but was left psychologically scarred. The trauma of the accident manifested itself in Fagan's inability to follow through with his cue when using the rest so that he 'froze' when using the instrument. This condition was seen for the first time during the 1979 World Team Event under the full glare of television cameras.
The condition affected other parts of Fagan's game and he began to suffer some heavy losses (notably 9-2 to the fast rising Steve Davis in 1979 World Championship qualifers). There were times when Fagan was able to over come the condition and he was able to produce some good performances, such as, reaching the quarter-finals of the 1979 UK; only losing 22-21 to Dennis Taylor in the 1981 Irish Championship and in beating David Taylor 10-9 in a controversial deciding frame in the 1982 World Championship to reach the last sixteen before losing credibly to Kirk Stevens (13-9). However such key wins became increasingly few and far between and by the end of the 1983 season Fagan had slumped to 37th in the world rankings.
Fagan was confident that his condition had been overcome during the 1984/1985 season although most of his matches ended in frustrating defeats, although he credibly pushed Terry Griffiths to 5-3 in the 1985 Mercantile Credit Classic. Fagan's last time in the limelight came in the 1985 World Championship where he won two tight matches to qualify (including a 10-9 success over Cliff Wilson). In the first round Fagan enjoyed a great success over Willie Thorne (10-6) in a year that Thorne was tipped as a potential world champion. Fagan lost to Ray Reardon 13-9 in he last sixteen but gained the admiration of many when he lent Reardon his cue in what proved to be the last frame when the tip flew off Reardon's own cue just as he was beginning his winning clearance.
Sadly Fagan never reached the television stages of a major tournament again (except for an appearance on the last Pot Black programme in 1986) and shot down the world rankings and his professional career ended with a loss to the Canadian Brady Gollan (9-2) in the late 1980s during a professional / amateur playoff (this system was in place for a couple of seasons before the professional game was thrown fully open).
No reports of Fagan's whereabouts have featured for several years. The last mention that I know of is that he became a milkman and was still based in South London. Despite his less than celebratory exit from snooker, Fagan will be remembered as the first winner of the UK championship; one of the hot band of amateurs that made the transition into the professional game at a time when it was fairly closed (thereby paving the way of other top amateurs like Steve Davis, Tony Meo and Jimmy White) and for being the first player from the Republic of Ireland to have any success. Both Eugene Hughes and Ken Doherty have mentioned that Fagan was an inspiration to them.
Despite his problems, Fagan had the reputation in the mid-to late-1970s as one of the hardest players in the game. Patsy Fagan: Irish battler.
Tim Sandle (timsandle@aol.com)
