Snooker thrives on control: the pace of the balls, the precision of the cueing, the rhythm of concentration. For Mark Selby, a four-time world champion whose game is built on meticulous detail, even the smallest disruption can ripple across the baize. At this week’s English Open in Brentwood, however, the disruption wasn’t small at all—it was structural. The cause? A swimming pool located inside the Brentwood Centre, the venue hosting the tournament.
The issue wasn’t the pool itself, of course, but the atmosphere it created. Pools generate humidity, and humidity is the silent enemy of snooker conditions. Selby, visibly frustrated after his early matches, pointed directly to the problem: “You can just feel the damp,” he said. “The balls don’t run the way they should, the cushions react differently, and it’s tough to play proper snooker.”
In a sport where the roll of the white ball must be predictable, dampness makes it heavier, slower, more erratic. Instead of sliding cleanly, balls tend to drag, picking up tiny bits of moisture and chalk dust. Long pots require extra effort, safety exchanges lose sharpness, and what should be clinical positional play becomes a guessing game. For a perfectionist like Selby, that is torment.
The Brentwood Centre is no stranger to hosting major events—it has staged concerts, boxing, and other indoor sportsbut its role as a snooker venue is relatively new. The English Open is part of the Home Nations series, meant to bring top-level snooker to different corners of Britain, but not every location is tailor-made for the demands of the sport. As Selby noted, “This isn’t the Crucible or the Barbican it’s a leisure centre. You’re dealing with conditions that aren’t ideal.”
Others in the field echoed his concerns quietly, though some players, like Ronnie O’Sullivan in years past, have often shrugged off external conditions as part of the challenge. Still, for a sport that prides itself on fine margins, the Brentwood set-up drew criticism. Fans, too, picked up on the chatter, with social media full of jokes about “swimming trunks for the interval” and questions about why the World Snooker Tour insists on using venues with such quirks.
Yet, the atmosphere in Brentwood also carries a charm. Crowds were enthusiastic, packing the arena and generating a buzz not always found in traditional theatres. For the organizers, accessibility and local engagement are part of the mission, even if conditions are less than pristine. “You want to take snooker to the people,” said one official. “Sometimes that means compromises.”
For Selby, however, compromises can feel like handicaps. He thrives on exactitude, on stripping every frame down to calculation and execution. In Brentwood, the environment shifted that balance, and his frustration was visible in body language as much as in words. The swimming pool may not have decided matches outright, but it added an invisible layer of unpredictability.
In the end, the English Open will move on, players will adjust, and champions will still emerge. But Selby’s words cut to the heart of professional snooker’s delicate relationship with its venues: in a sport of millimetres, even the damp in the air can change everything.
