Bob Marshall

Robert James Percival Marshall, OAM (10 April 1910 – 23 February 2004) was a noted Australian amateur player of English billiards and a politician. He won the World Amateur Billiards Championship in 1936, 1938, 1951 and 1962 and was runner-up three times, as well as a national snooker champion.

Marshall was born in Kalgoorlie, the same town as another legend of the game, Walter Lindrum. Throughout his career he was compared favourably with Lindrum who, in 1954, himself declared that Marshall was one of the greatest amateur players he had ever seen. Ten years later, the contemporary English snooker professional Fred Davis said of Marshall, "Most noticeable about his style is his compactness, so like Walter Lindrum, and the shortness of his back-swing, hardly more than a couple of inches." In 1969 he made a comeback for a series of exhibition matches against New Zealand professional Clark McConachy and regained his Australian title the same year, defending it successfully in 1970 before retiring once again.

In 1985 he won the Australian title at the age of 75. This success encouraged him to travel to New Delhi, India for an attempt at his fifth world title where he won all matches except the final which was taken by rising Indian champion Geet Sethi, Marshall actually led after the first two hours of the six hour final. The following year he won the Australian title again, his 21st, and retired shortly afterwards: 50 years after his first Australian title win.

His best break was 1,056 which he made in practice in 49 minutes.

Awarded the Australian Sports Medal on 2 November 2000.