World champs Judd’s last hurrah
"You have good days and bad days, like anything." Manawatu snooker player Dave Judd.
Dave Judd’s tilt at the world masters snooker championships in Qatar will be his last big international competition.
Manawatu’s Judd will still compete, but once he’s home from Doha he will take up a role working for the New Zealand association.
He will become a junior development officer, doing coaching and managing for national age-group teams, and he will also work as a referee.
He will still go to the Oceania championships and still play the New Zealand masters, but won’t compete as a player overseas.
This trip to Doha will be the second world championships for Judd after he went to the open championships in India in 2014, but he pulled out of going to Egypt last year because of security concerns.
There are 11 in the New Zealand team going to Doha and he is in the masters grade.
‘‘Last time I went to the world open I just got crucified. I couldn’t match the younger guys.’’
Judd is 50, but the young players at the open competition, with a lot of them former professionals and world-class players, were extremely good.
‘‘I played a match in India and got trounced 4-0 and there was nothing I could do. Everything I touched turned to custard. ‘‘He humiliated me.’’ Judd still had his head held high and congratulated the guy, who was 15 then and is now a professional. He learnt a lot from that trip, he said.
Judd lives in Havelock North but works in Palmerston North as a Sky installer and plays at the Manawatu Gentlemen’s Club and the Palmerston North Cosmopolitan Club.
‘‘With the practice and stuff like that, you can’t rely on going back to Hawke’s Bay and put a week’s work on practice into a day and a half.’’
He has been doing a lot more practice to be at the level required to compete internationally.
At the RSA national singles championships at Otaki recently he reached the semifinals and missed getting to the final by missing out in the black ball game in the final frame, so he’s been working on that particularly in case it happens again in Qatar.
He has been playing on a pro table at the Gentlemen’s Club, which is a fast table with unforgiving pockets.
Recently he held an exhibition day at the Cossie Club so he could get some competition in.
‘‘There are probably two or three [players in Manawatu] that are up to my level and it’s on the day.
‘‘You have good days and bad days, like anything.
‘‘There are two or three guys here that give me match practice.’’
At the New Zealand championships in Gore in July he finished in the last eight and he also earned selection for the worlds.
Judd started played snooker when he was 12 and played with his grandfather and father.
He played on and off throughout his 20s and 30s, then gave it up and started playing golf.
But he got back into it in 2011 when he moved from Levin to Hawke’s Bay and a friend convinced him to start again on the New Zealand circuit.
He is ranked No 12 in New Zealand.
With all his experience he should be a good coach and Judd said you can’t change the way players play, but can change their attitude.