Until August 3, 2020, Sean Murphy held the record for the fastest win at the World Snooker Championship. In 2019, Murphy needed just 149 minutes, or two hours and 29 minutes, to whitewash Chinese qualifier Luo Honghao 10-0 in his first-round match; Luo set another, less desirable record, for the fewest points scored in a match since the Championship moved to the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield in 1977, just 89.
However, a year later, then-five-time World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan put in a similarly dominant performance against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh of Thailand at the equivalent stage of the Championship. ‘The Rocket’ required just 82 minutes, or one hour and 22 minutes, to establish an 8-1 overnight lead at the end of the first session – in which he recorded an average shot time of 13.41 seconds, and another 26 minutes to win the first two frames of the second, thereby dispatching his opponent 10-1. His overall winning time, of 108 minutes, or one hour and 48 minutes, was fully 41 minutes faster than the previous record. Nevertheless, O’Sullivan said afterwards, ‘I’m not really bothered by records…they’re overrated in many ways.’
As a matter of interest, O’Sullivan also holds the record for the fastest 147 break, clocked at five minutes and eight seconds, in the fourteenth frame of his first-round match against Mick Price in the World Snooker Championship in 1997. He also came agonising close to breaking the record for the fastest televised century break – three minutes and 31 seconds, set by Tony Drago at the UK Championship in 1996 – at the Scottish Open in 2022. In the second frame of his first-round match against the susbequently disgraced Bai Langning, compiled a century break in what appeared to be a new record time but, on review, the time was corrected to three minutes and 34 seconds, just three seconds shy of the record.