Kyren Wilson aiming to join very exclusive club at the 2024 UK Snooker Championship

Victory at the Barbican Centre in York on December 1st, would see Wilson become only the seventh player in professional snooker history to have won both the World and UK Championship titles within the same calendar year.

Wilson has enjoyed a brilliant season wearing the world crown for the first time. The Englishman currently sits second in the seasonal one-year list and he has moved up to number two in the overall world rankings - a career high position.

It was a slow start to the campaign for the now 32-year-old, though, as he went out in the opening phase of the Championship League and was then whitewashed in his first match at the Shanghai Masters.

However, ‘The Warrior’ has made up for that - and then some - by adding two more ranking event crowns to his CV following victories at the inaugural Xi’an Grand Prix in August and the Northern Ireland Open in October. In both finals, Wilson denied Judd Trump.

Next up for Wilson is a title tilt at the UK Championship, the first Triple Crown event of the 2024/25 season. Historically, this tournament has not been a particularly fruitful one for a top ranked player like Wilson, having reached the semi-finals of it on ‘just’ one occasion from 12 attempts.

Should Wilson buck that trend, though, and lift the famous UK trophy on December 1st, he would join Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, John Parrott, John Higgins, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby in an exclusive club of players who have tasted World and UK glory within the same calendar year.

Davis was the first player to achieve this unique feat in 1981, the same year he claimed his maiden world title at the Crucible Theatre. Several months later he successfully defended the UK crown with a 16-3 defeat of Terry Griffiths in the final.

‘The Nugget’ went on to complete the World-UK yearly calendar double two more times: 1984 and 1987.

Next to tick both these boxes was Hendry, whose maiden double mirrored Davis’.

The first of Hendry’s seven world titles came in 1990; later in the same year, he retained the UK title with a 16-15 winning verdict over Davis in the final. This was the same title match line-up from the year before.

In total, Hendry won World and UK accolades within the same year four times, three of those coming in consecutive years in the mid-90s: 1990, 1994, 1995, 1996.

Parrott enjoyed an incredible 1991, securing snooker’s two biggest ranking event trophies for the first time time in his career in a matter of months. In both of those finals he stopped Jimmy White (although White got the better of Parrott in the 1992 UK final).

Similar to Parrott, John Higgins wore snooker’s top two ranked crowns for the first time in 1998. During the same year, Higgins also became world number one for the first time as he usurped Hendry at the top of the rankings tree, ending his fellow Scot’s unbroken eight-year spell there.

2001 was the year that O’Sullivan realised his dream of becoming the World Champion, and he built on that Sheffield success near the end of the same year with UK Championship trophy number three of his career.

The last player to join this World-UK club was Selby in 2016. He had won both the World and UK titles before, but this was the first time he put them together in the same calendar year.

Several players have also come close to this special achievement.

During his rookie professional season and in only his second event, Terry Griffiths memorably won the 1979 World Championship as a qualifier. In the subsequent UK final, he was pipped 14-13 by John Virgo in the final.

1982 World Champion Alex Higgins was also one frame away from adding the UK crown; narrowly losing to Terry Griffiths 16-15 in the final.

In reverse order, Peter Ebdon won his UK crown in 2006; earlier in the year he was stopped by Graeme Dott in the Crucible showpiece match.

Mark Williams twice won World and UK Championship titles within the same season - 1999/2000 and 2002/03 - but not the same calendar year.

For full details on the 2024 UK Championship, including the draw, results, schedule, format, prize money breakdown and how to watch, please visit our tournament information centre.