COMMENT: Hole in 1-47

Will Spence believes snooker and golf are kindred spirits after watching Ali Carter's maximum break

IF any of you were watching the snooker last night, you might have spotted me (I was the one with the pink stripy jumper five rows up) along with the other half of the Crucible crowd cheering Ali Carter onto his first ever tournament 147.

It was a spine-tingling moment, heightened by the fact that Peter Ebdon had only just missed out on a possible 147 himself, and I feel extremely privileged to have watched World Championship history unfold in front of my eyes.

Now, I've been going to the World Championships for a few years now since the days that Steve Davis was winning, so that's more than a few years and that is possibly one of the greatest moments I have witnessed there, not only for Carter's maximum break, but the sportsmanship involved once the Londoner had sunk that final black.

His opponent, Ebdon, seemed to be just as pleased as he was and this got me thinking, that snooker and golf are inextricably linked. Seeing a 147 at the Crucible is rarer than a hole-in-one at the Masters, Ian Poulter was the only one to manage an ace last month, last but both share a common theme, that when it happens everyone involved is genuinely thrilled for the lucky exponent.

When someone scores a hat-trick in football or a century in cricket, the applause is appreciative but they don't go round high fiving each other as in golf and snooker.

Another tenuous link is that Ian Woosnam was President of the World Snooker Association in 1999, but it's my original point, the level of sportsmanship that links both games and makes them special and endearing to us, the ticket-buying public. Perhaps a few other sports out there could learn a thing or two from snooker and golf.