Joseph Davis (15 April 1901 – 10 July 1978) was an English professional snooker and billiards player. He was the dominant figure in snooker from the 1920s to the 1950s, and has been credited with inventing aspects of the way the game is now played, such as break-building. He drove the creation of the World Snooker Championship by persuading the Billiards Association and Control Council to recognise an official professional snooker championship in 1927. Davis won the first 15 world championships from 1927 to 1946, and he is the only undefeated player in World Snooker Championship history. In 1935, he scored the championship's first century break.
A professional English billiards player from the age of 18, Davis was World Billiards Champion four times between 1928 and 1932. He was the first person to win world championship titles in both billiards and snooker. After his 1946 victory, Davis no longer played in the World Snooker Championship but he participated in other tournaments and exhibition matches until 1964, winning four News of the World Snooker Tournament titles. He also continued to wield considerable influence over the professional game through his chairmanship of the professional players' association, his co-ownership of the Leicester Square Hall venue, and his negotiation of television contracts. His younger brother, Fred Davis, was the only person to defeat him in a competitive snooker match without receiving a start.
In 1955, Davis was the first player to make an officially recognised maximum break. He collapsed whilst watching his brother Fred play Perrie Mans in the semi-final of the 1978 World Snooker Championship. During his convalescence, Davis contracted a chest infection which led to his death on 10 July that year.
Joseph Davis was born in Whitwell, Derbyshire, on 15 April 1901, the son of Fred Davis and Ann Eliza Davis, née Clark. His younger brother, Fred, the youngest of the family's six children, would also grow up to become a professional snooker player. His father was a miner when Joe was born, and had become a publican by the time Joe was two years old, managing the Travellers Rest pub at Whittington Moor. Davis was sent to live with his grandparents in Newbold for several years. By the time he moved back to live with his parents, his father was the landlord of the Queen's Hotel, which had a full-size billiard table. Davis started playing English billiards at the age of eleven. From the age of twelve, he took lessons from Ernest Rudge, a billiards player turned entrepreneur, who lived in Chesterfield and had recently opened a billiard hall in the town. The lessons took place at Rudge's private billiard room at the end of his garden. Davis would later manage billiard halls owned either by his family or by Rudge. He scored his first century break in billiards at age twelve in an exhibition game against J. D. Dickens.
Rudge arranged professional matches at his billiards hall in Chesterfield. In December 1913, he hosted a week-long match between the Australian billiards player George Gray, and Claude Falkiner from Featherstone in West Yorkshire. Davis acted as the spot boy for this match, giving him the chance to closely observe the technique of the two professional players. At one point during the week, Rudge asked Gray to give his opinion of Davis. Gray played with a stance that involved sighting with both eyes centrally over the cue, and with the cue running down the middle of his chin. Davis could not focus with his right eye so he played using a stance in which he rested the cue slightly to the left side of his chin, allowing him to sight along the cue with just his left eye. According to Davis, Gray said of him: "the boy will never be a good player until he alters his sighting." Davis was despondent following Gray's assessment of him. Rudge tried to change Davis's technique and stance to make him play "two-eyed" but, since Davis could not play this way naturally, they decided not to persist in trying to alter this aspect of his style.
At the age of 13, Davis beat Dickens to win the Chesterfield and District Amateur Billiards Championship. The final score over three evenings was 1,500–1,229 to Davis, who received a trophy, a gold medal and a set of billiard balls for making a break of 115, the highest of the tournament. In February 1915, Rudge organised a match between Tom Reece and Willie Smith at Chesterfield. Reece played a practice game against Davis on the afternoon of 11 February, because Smith had a business engagement elsewhere. Davis, who was given a handicap start of 650 points, defeated Reece 1,000–785. At the opening of the Victoria Billiard Hall in Hasland the same year, Davis played the ex-Yorkshire champion F. W. Hughes of Leeds in an exhibition match. Davis received a handicap start of 200 points, and defeated Hughes 600–370, concluding with an unfinished break of 99. In an exhibition match at Chesterfield against Falkiner on 14 September 1916, he lost 232–400, after being given a 150-point head start.
Davis became a professional billiards player in 1919 at the age of 18. His first professional match was in February 1920 at Brampton Coliseum, just outside Chesterfield, against Albert Raynor of Sheffield. It was a week-long match of the first to 8,000 points. Raynor conceded 1,000 points to Davis from the start. The match finished on 14 February, and resulted in a victory for Davis by 145 points. His highest break of the match was 160. By the end of March 1920, Davis's highest recorded break in billiards was 468. He defeated the Midlands champion, Fred Lawrence, at Chesterfield on 27 March 1920 in a week-long match of the first to 8,000 points. Having received a start of 1,000 points, Davis won by 8,000–7,494, and made 23 breaks over 100, the highest of which was 262. On 29 November 1920, he began a week-long match of the first to 8,000 points, against Arthur F. Peall at the Victoria Billiard Hall in Chesterfield. Davis received a start of 1,000 points, but lost 7,785–8,000.
In March 1921, he lost 302–400 to Lawrence in the semi-final of an invitational professional tournament at Thurston's Hall held in aid of the St. Dunstan's aftercare fund. He had eliminated Scottish champion Tom Aiken in his previous match. He also lost to Lawrence in the final of his first open professional championship, the 1921 Midlands Counties Billiards Championship. Lawrence won by 866 in the first-to-7,000-points contest. At Manchester in April, Davis lost 13,208–15,000 against the northern billiards champion, Tom Tothill, despite making a break of 495.
He faced the Welsh champion, Tom Carpenter, in a match to 7,000 points at Cardiff in January 1922, winning just one point. He won the 1922 Midlands Counties Billiards Championship, defeating Tom Dennis 6,417–4,433 in the week-long final in February. Later that year, a victory in the Second Division Billiards Championship, which included a win in the final over Peall in March, gave Davis an entry into the Billiards Association and Control Council (BA&CC) Professional Championship. According to The Birmingham Daily Gazette report, he was "outclassed" by Tom Newman in their championship match, which concluded on 15 April 1922, losing 5,181–8,000.
Davis failed to qualify for the 1923 professional championship, losing to Lawrence in the Second Division semi-final at Chesterfield in February. On 11 October 1923, he made the highest break of his career to that point, 599, against Lawrence at the Burroughes Hall in Piccadilly. The final score was 14,000–10,743 to Davis. He became Midlands champion for the second time in 1924, defeating Lawrence 14,000–12,263 in the final. On 28 February 1924, he made a break of 980 in the Second Division Championship at Cardiff, during a 14,000–10,240 semi-final victory over Carpenter. Davis won the championship that year, easily overcoming Lawrence in the final; his winning margin was 6,198 points with the final score 14,000–7,802. Lawrence was out of condition during this game, following a serious illness from some time before, and the result was never in doubt from the early stages.