Which snooker player won the 1972 World Snooker Championship?

Alex Higgins won the 1972 World Snooker Championship.

Higgins defeated John Spencer 37–32 in the final at the Victoria Hall in London. It was his first world title and made him the second player from Northern Ireland to win the championship.

His attacking style and expressive personality helped broaden snooker’s appeal during the sport’s television boom. Higgins later won the 1982 championship, giving him two world titles in total.

The 1972 result is sometimes confused with Higgins’s 1982 victory, which came a decade later and featured a different final opponent. It is also separate from his 1976 runner-up finish. World Championship finals in this era used much longer match formats than many modern tournaments, making the 1972 scoreline look unusually large to newer viewers.