Dominic Dale – ‘I picked the right time to retire’

Dominic Dale has played his last match as a professional snooker player after losing in the 2025 World Championship qualifiers on Saturday.

The Welshman had already announced at the start of the season his intentions to retire from the main tour.

He had been hoping to bow out at the Crucible Theatre, but the 53 year-old was beaten by countryman Daniel Wells in the penultimate round of the preliminaries in Sheffield.

It looked promising when breaks of 131 and 69 helped Dale to an early 4-2 lead, but his opponent took the remaining three frames of the first session and all five during the evening’s play to advance to Judgement Day instead.

Dale was ranked as the world number 48 heading into this year’s World Championship, and as a top 64 player had the option to continue for another season.

But after 33 years on the World Snooker Tour, the two-time ranking event winner has opted to call time on his professional career.

“It’s something I’ve built up to for probably a month since my last match at the Welsh Open,” Dominic Dale told the World Snooker Tour.

“I commentated on the World Grand Prix, the Players Championship, and the Tour Championship, so I haven’t had anything for a while.”

“I’ve tried to create a retirement situation with how I’m going to live my life for the last month.

“I think my victory really was clinging on to the very final seeding position for the last round of seeds [at the World Championship].

“I had a couple of wins, one against Mitchell Mann actually that did it for me when qualifying for the Welsh.

“So I made the last round of seeds, which was an extra bonus financially and it meant I could have an extra couple of days off practicing.

“But it’s difficult. It’s upsetting to think that you can’t do more than a couple of hours a day before you start getting pain in your shoulder and some on your finger joints.

“I think Daniel is one of these players who has worked very hard on his career over the years, he has put a lot of time in.

“You can see it, he was fantastic today from 4-2 behind. He really raised his game, and I just stayed the same. I got worse.

“When pressure hit me, I couldn’t respond. But Daniel certainly did, and I hope he has a wonderful career.

“From my point of view, I’m just going to focus on the commentary. I hope it takes off, I thoroughly enjoy it.

“It’s tough, at the age of 53, to keep playing matches. All the highs and all the lows.

“From my point of view, there are a lot of wonderful memories, but there’s a lot of forgetting to do as well.

“It’s tough to have a competitive frame of mind – that killer instinct – evident in you in your mid-fifties. It’s not something I want to have any more.

“I definitely picked the right time to retire.

“I’ve made light of it with my friends and that in Gloucestershire, saying that I can’t wait to retire and everything, that it’d be great to do the commentary and a lot of running and walking.

“I’m really looking forward to that, and I can indulge my other interests. Maybe I can get reading glasses now, which is something I actually put off for a few months.

“I spoke to Peter Ebdon yesterday, and he said that I’m going to miss it. But Peter doesn’t play on the World Seniors Tour, and he doesn’t do much of the commentary.

“So he really has let things go, he really has disassociated himself from every element of playing the game. He does a bit of coaching now.

“But I’ll still be involved. I’m going to be playing on the seniors tour – I’m looking forward to the World Seniors Championship.

“I’ll be playing in that on the 7th of May. I don’t know how I’ll do, but I’ll want to get that amateur mentality back that I had when I was a youngster.

“Enjoy the game, give something back to the sport, have fun with the audience, not take it quite so seriously.

“They are worlds apart – being a professional sportsperson in any sport is very difficult, it’s very cut and thrust.

“I shall enjoy the seniors, because I shan’t treat it quite in the same way. I’ll have fun, and I’ll still be playing a little bit which is nice.”

Dominic Dale turned professional in 1992 at the same time as Ronnie O’Sullivan, John Higgins, and Mark Williams.

As an amateur, he won the 1991 Welsh Amateur Championship and reached the final of the World Amateur Championship the following year.

He didn’t enjoy the same level of success as his contemporaries, but he had a useful knack of punching above his weight and finding form at just the right time.

After winning the 1996 Malaysian Masters invitational, Dale stunned the snooker world with his victory at the prestigious Grand Prix in 1997, where he beat John Higgins in the final.

Ten years later, Dale added a second ranking title to his collection with an unexpected glory at the inaugural Shanghai Masters.

Memorable tournament successes also materialised at the 1999 Nations Cup alongside his Welsh teammates and at the 2014 Snooker Shoot Out where he serenaded the crowd with a rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”.

Known as the Spaceman for his enigmatic personality, Dale qualified ten times for the World Championship and reached two Crucible quarter-finals in 2000 and 2014.

With a career-high ranking of 19, he is probably regarded as the best player ever to have never broken into the elite top 16.

As a result, Dale never had the opportunity to compete at the prestigious Masters in London.

His career as a snooker player isn’t completely over, however, and he will be returning the Crucible Theatre next month for the 2025 World Seniors Championship as one of the favourites.

Joining him will be Joe Perry, another Class of ’92 graduate who has played his last match on the main tour.

Perry, who confirmed his intentions to retire a couple of days ago, lost 10-5 to Yuan Sijun at the English Institute of Sport.

Featured photo credit: WST