Image: Ding Junhui with fans

Description: Wow! What a day of snooker it was today. We got to see Ronnie O'Sullivan, Mark Selby and Neil Robertson all in one session - that's probably the three best players in the world. The fourth player we watched today was this guy, Ding Junhui. He lost his match to the clinical Neil Robertson but on the way managed to make a maximum 147 break. Both tournament 147 breaks and my presence at live snooker are sufficiently rare for this combination to potentially never happen again, so we were thrilled to see a maximum in the flesh. To top it all, while I was waiting for Laura to powder her nose, I managed to share a moment and a handshake with my fellow stroke survivor Willie Thorne who is back in the commentary box like he'd never been away. And he's an absolute gent. Speaking of which, back to Ding. We think of Ronnie O'Sullivan as being probably the most popular snooker player, but as we were reminded today, this guy regularly pulls in TV audiences of 20-30 million every time he appears on telly, and to the Chinese fans he really is a rock star. Although he was buoyed up by his 147 (and associated £12k bonus) he stayed to meet and greet with fans even though he'd just lost the game, and nobody forces him to do that. To his credit, Mark Selby did exactly the same thing after his match even though he'd just lost it and probably just wanted to go home. Nice guys.
Title: Ding Junhui with fans
Credit: Project 366 #50: 190216 Maximum Man!
Author: Pete from Liverpool, UK
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication
License: CC0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en
Attribution Required?: No