Terence Martin Griffiths OBE (16 October 1947 – 1 December 2024) was a Welsh professional snooker player, coach and pundit.

This was only the second time a qualifier had won the World Snooker Championship, after Alex Higgins in 1972; only Shaun Murphy in 2005 has since emulated the achievement.

Griffiths was runner-up at the Masters three times and reached the final of the 1989 European Open, where he lost the deciding frame to John Parrott.

Although he also won several other tournaments, Griffiths's determination to match his rival Davis led to changes in technique which commentators said cost him his natural flair for playing.

After leaving school, he worked in a coal mine and became the youngest winner of the Llanelli and District snooker championship at age 16.

[6][9] He won the English Amateur Championship in 1977 by defeating Sid Hood 13–3 in the final, and retained the title in 1978 by winning 13–6 against Joe Johnson.

[13] After qualifying for the 1979 World Championship by eliminating Bernard Bennett 9–2 (from 0–2 behind) and Jim Meadowcroft 9–6 (from 6–6),[14] Griffiths defeated the previous year's runner-up Perrie Mans 13–8 in the first round and Alex Higgins 13–12 in the quarter-finals.

[15] After beating Eddie Charlton 19–17 in a long semi-final which finished at 1:40 am,[16] Griffiths told interviewer David Vine: "I'm in the final now, you know.

[16] The match was close for the first four of the six sessions and level at 15–15 before Griffiths took a 17–16 lead and won 24–16,[16] becoming world champion at his first attempt[16][4] in his second tournament as a professional.

Virgo had been penalised two frames for arriving late to a session (not realising that the start time had been moved up as requested by the television broadcasters), which reduced his lead to 9–11.

[29] He won the 1980 Masters, defeating Alex Higgins 9–5 in front of 2,323 spectators (a record crowd for a UK snooker event) at the Wembley Conference Centre after compiling a break of 131 to win the decisive frame.

[34] With this first-round defeat, Griffiths became the first victim of the so-called "Crucible curse", a term later adopted to describe the failure of any first-time champion to defend their title at the venue.

[23] After Tony Knowles's surprise 10–1 win over Davis in the first round of the 1982 World Championship, Griffiths became the bookmakers' favourite for the title.

[23] Griffiths won several further invitational events, including Pot Black in 1984, and the 1984 Malaysian Masters (where he topped a round-robin group in which Tony Meo was the runner-up).

[41][42] His ranking had dropped to fourteenth in 1982/1983 when his 1979 points were no longer counted towards his total, which at the time was calculated purely on the basis of results of the preceding three world championships.

[47][48] The players had been level at 8–8 after the first of two days' play in the final, and Terry Smith of The Daily Telegraph said after the match: "Griffiths knows he produced his best snooker since he became world champion in 1979, and still lost.

[53] Griffiths moved back into sixth place after the 1991–92 season, during which he reached three ranking semi-finals, including that of the 1992 World Championship, where he scored victories over Bob Chaperon, Neal Foulds and Peter Ebdon before losing to Stephen Hendry.

In the second round, he lost to old rival Steve Davis (whom he never defeated at the Crucible in six attempts) and announced his retirement from the game to become the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association's Director of Coaching.

"[56] At the 1997 World Championship, Griffiths came out of retirement, and won his qualifying match against Alfie Burden 10–4, to play in the main tournament at the Crucible one last time.

[61] In their book, Masters of the Baize, Luke Williams and Paul Gadsby wrote that Griffiths may have won more tournaments if he had not adjusted his playing technique to challenge Davis.

[4] Gordon Burn reported in his 1986 book, Pocket Money, that Ray Reardon felt that Griffiths began to decline as a player after he signed a management contract with Barry Hearn (Davis's manager) at the end of the 1981–82 season and changes Griffiths made to his stance and cueing cost him his "natural flair".

"[63] Everton wrote about Griffiths's change of technique, "While he acquired an encyclopaedic technical knowledge in the process and maintained an admirable consistency, he could never quite recapture the flair and inspiration that had brought him the world title.