Dave Harold
English snooker player
David William Harold (born 9 December 1966) is an English former professional snooker player from Stoke-on-Trent. He was known by the nicknames of "the Hard Man" and "the Stoke Potter" (conflating his home city's pottery industry and his profession of potting snooker balls). As an amateur he played as David Harold, but after turning professional in 1991 he was registered as Dave Harold.
He won one ranking title, reached two further finals and several semi-finals, and spent four seasons ranked among the top 16. He compiled 143 century breaks. Steve Davis has commented that he is not the most naturally gifted player, but makes up for this with strong tactical play. For his technique and grinding play he has been compared to Cliff Thorburn.
Career
Early career
Soon after turning professional, Harold won the 1993 Asian Open, beating Darren Morgan 9–3 in the final. Ranked 93rd in the world at the time, he became the lowest-ranked player ever to win a ranking tournament. He never repeated this achievement, although he reached his second ranking final in the 1994 Grand Prix, losing 6–9 to John Higgins.
“Dave Harold” enters the record as english snooker player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dave, Harold and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dave Harold” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dave, Harold and English provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q949257. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1991, 1993 and 1994.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dave Harold” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.