SCOTLAND's Michaela Tabb will referee this year's Betfred.com World Championship final in Sheffield on May 6 and 7.
The Glaswegian has been a professional snooker referee since 2001 and officiated her first Crucible final in 2009, between John Higgins and Shaun Murphy.
"I was absolutely elated when I found out I was doing it again this year," admitted the 44-year-old. "I loved it when I did the final in 2009. It went really well for me without any mistakes so I just hope it will be the same this time.
"It's such a huge tournament with a lot of history and potentially hundreds of millions of people watching on television. There's no venue like the Crucible in terms of the atmosphere. When it falls silent it is so intense."
Tabb is one of the most successful female officials in sport, and has paved the way for more female snooker referees, including China's Zhu Ying who has established herself on the pro circuit this season. "It's amazing to see the difference between now and when I started, when refereeing was dominated by men," added Tabb.
This year's World Championship starts later this month and will feature 32 of the world's best players battling for prize money of £1.1m.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article