Ken Doherty has announced he is retiring from the main snooker tour, bringing an end to a career that began in 1990 and peaked with his 1997 world title. The 56-year-old said he will no longer play on the main circuit, but plans to keep competing on the senior tour.

He discussed the decision on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland after first confirming it in an interview with the Irish Independent, saying the timing felt right after years of trying to keep pace with a game that has only become tougher. “It just got harder as I got older,” Doherty said. “You remember all the good days and can’t replicate that as good as you used to. It becomes hard work and a bit more frustrating. So, I do think the time was right.”

Doherty’s retirement closes the main-tour chapter for one of Irish snooker’s most recognisable figures, but not the sport entirely. He won the world championship in 1997 by beating Stephen Hendry at the Crucible, and he said he still finds himself drawn back to that triumph and the memories that came with it. “I never get sick of hearing those nice bits of commentary at the end of the ’97 world championship,” he said.

That affection for the game is also why he stayed on longer than he expected. Doherty said he “probably should have done it a few years ago,” but he kept playing because he loved it and wanted to keep going while he could. He also linked his own career to the Irish champions who inspired him as a boy, saying he dreamed of winning after seeing Alex Higgins lift the title in ’82 and Dennis Taylor do it in ’85, before describing the homecoming that followed his own victory with the cup and an open-top bus from the airport.

For now, the main-tour exit is settled, even if the final match date is not. Doherty has not set out a full senior-tour schedule, but he has made clear that he intends to remain in competition there. The bigger question is no longer whether he will walk away from the top level. It is how long the sport’s 1997 champion wants to keep writing the last pages of his career.