As a player that did not reach the championship final, he was eligible to enter the 1946 Albany Club Professional Snooker Tournament, which he won.
Walter Weir Wilson Donaldson was born in Edinburgh, on 2 February 1907,[1][2][3] the son of a billiard hall manager.
[4] Donaldson won the under-16 division of the British Junior English Billiards Championship in 1922 at the age of 15,[8] and turned professional the following year.
[10][11] He first entered the World Snooker Championship in 1933 defeating Willie Leigh 13 frames to 11 before losing 1–13 in the semi-finals to Joe Davis.
[12] His six-year absence has been attributed to a commitment to practise and improve his standard of play following the resounding defeat by Davis.
[1][13] In 1939, he defeated Herbert Holt and Dickie Laws in the qualifying competition, both 18–13, then Claude Falkiner 21–10 in the first round, before losing 15–16 to Sidney Smith in the quarter-finals.
[12] Donaldson was called up in 1940,[18] and served in Canada, North Africa, Greece and Italy as a sergeant in the Royal Corps of Signals attached to the Fourth Indian Division, which was an original component of the Eighth Army when it was formed in September 1941.
[1][28] His tactics during the championship involved compiling breaks of around 30 to 50 points, and playing safety rather than attempting difficult pots.
[18] In his book Talking Snooker, first published in 1979, Fred Davis reflected that he had probably been "perhaps overconfident" and also had not expected Donaldson's standard to have improved so much as a result of his many hours of practice.
[25] In the 1948 World Snooker Championship, held only six months after the 1947 tournament,[1] Donaldson reached the final with wins against Kingsley Kennerley and Albert Brown.
[29] At the 1948 Sunday Empire News Tournament, which was a round-robin event with handicaps applied,[a] Donaldson finished fourth of five players.
[30] In the 1949 World Snooker Championship final, Fred Davis won 80–65 against Donaldson,[14] having taken a winning lead of 73–58 on the previous day.
[32][33] In the handicapped[b] 1949/1950 News of the World Snooker Tournament, Donaldson won only two of his seven round-robin matches and placed seventh out of the eight participants.
[43] The Billiard Player magazine attributed Donaldson's success to his strong safety play and a below-par performance from Davis.
[44] A column in the Manchester Evening News, after the final, commented that, "So afraid were Fred Davis and Walter Donaldson ... of making any rash move which would cost them a frame that play was painfully slow at times.
[47] Donaldson won half of his matches at the 1951/1952 News of the World Snooker Tournament, leading to a sixth-place ranking out of the nine players.
[1] The 1952 World Professional Match-play Championship final featured Fred Davis and Donaldson and was contested across 73 frames.
[55] The 1953 World Professional Match-play Championship final in March saw Donaldson and Davis even at 6–6 after the first day of the 71-frame match.
[61] In the 1954 World Professional Match-play Championship, Fred Davis and Donaldson met in their eighth successive final.
[69] Donaldson inflicted Fred Davis's only defeat in the 1957/1958 News of the World Snooker Tournament (21–16), before finishing third of five players in the final table.
He was considered one of the greatest long potters of all time,[9] and a very consistent player, partly due to his avoidance of the use of side.
[13] Joe Davis wrote of Donaldson in 1948 that:[76] "He pots with great accuracy, and that cool leisurely style of his will take a lot of breaking down.
Many players who watch Donaldson go away vowing to copy his square 'two-eyed' stance, but the chief merits of his style are the closeness to his body of both arms and the quiet, slow, easy-looking rhythm of his action.