There's no question that the run of maximum breaks early in this 2025-26 snooker season has been remarkable.
There have been 10 already in this campaign. That's compared with three, two and three by the end of September in the last three seasons.
Even the statisticians who have seen it all have been shaking their heads in bemusement at this one.
So what's going on? It's an obvious starting point to say that standards are rising throughout the game. But they have been for many years. Why has the last three months been so dramatic?
Freak periods happen in all sports of course. A spate of world records in athletics for example. It could just be one of those spells.
Nobody would be that surprised if the rest of the season settles down into a more regular pattern from this point onwards.
'Like a computer game'
What is undeniable in my view is that the players are feeding off each other. It's catching, in the best way possible. I've felt it at tournaments before when we see a succession of serious attempts at a maximum. You just sense that one is on the way.
There's a similar feeling now, across all events. When you're watching on television and a player has potted five reds and five blacks, you're half expecting them to make it all the way to 147 points.
Remember, it's not just the 10 maximums but countless other close run things already this season.
This current crop of professionals are making a complex and frustrating sport look like a computer game, due to their excellence.
And it's not just the cream of the crop either, as it might have been in past decades. Players throughout the tour are good enough to record maximums now.
Is it taking the shine off one of snooker's great selling points? Seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry suggested recently that might be the case. A bit like the nine darter, once a rare occurrence and now pretty commonplace.
I suppose it's hard to argue they're as newsworthy as they once were. Yet there is still a mystique.
Put it this way, if you're in the arena watching a maximum attempt, are you ever going to sit there as the player in question reaches the colours and think, not for me, the shine has been taken off these?
That's very unlikely in my books. Instead, I suspect you'll be on the edge of your seat willing the player on to finish the job. The player's opponent will be the same (well, most of the time anyway).
Other tables will often pause their matches. Everyone backstage will be glued to a television set. These moments take over entire buildings. I can't see all that ever changing really.
What Ronnie O'Sullivan did in Saudi Arabia recently – as I reflected in my first Sporting Life column of the season – took it up another level, with two maximums in a one-session match. It was spellbinding stuff and followed Jackson Page making a pair of maximums (in different sessions) in a World Championship qualifier a few months earlier.
That's sport. It's all about the next achievement, the next landmark. What's next, who knows? Maybe 147 breaks in successive frames? It sounds absurd to suggest it, but we'd have said that about two in one session not so long ago.
Maybe a maximum to win a world title? I'm just chucking ideas out there really. The standard is now so impressive that nothing feels out of the question.
I heard Dominic Dale calling a potential 147 break in commentary when a player was on their second red at the English Open two weeks ago. In past times, I'd have thought it was too early. Now, it honestly just feels like good practice for pundits.
I've tired myself out in recent weeks looking for answers over this run of maximums. The truth is there are no clear answers.
We are seeing outstanding sport from very talented practitioners right now. The next maximum could be made any time, any place. Keep your eyes on the screen.
A Rolls Royce of a snooker player
Shaun Murphy was a brilliant winner of the British Open. We talk about the tournament's 'FA Cup style format' so much, it's become a cliche.
But it sure did come into its own with this Murphy run to the title in Cheltenham. Having to beat Neil Robertson, Judd Trump and Mark Selby is a monstrous effort, even in short format matches. He then finished the job by seeing off Anthony McGill in a hard-fought final on Sunday.
Murphy, with former world champion Peter Ebdon in his corner these days, has now won 13 ranking titles. He is in the top 10 of all-time ranking event winners. That feels more like it for a player of his prodigious talents.
When Murphy is really firing, he's an absolute Rolls Royce of a player, with that delightful cue action of his. Stomp, pot, stomp, pot. It's mesmerising to watch actually.
This has been some year for Murphy. An outstanding winner of the Masters in January, in a week which also featured him making a maximum break at Alexandra Palace. Now British Open champion, beating a host of superstars along the way. All done while toasting the 20 year anniversary of his famous Crucible triumph in 2005.
Murphy is talking a confident game right now, as well he might. The 43-year-old seems buoyant. There's no reason to think there's not a fair few more successes still left in his locker.
Matchroom documentary does disservice to snooker
The Matchroom documentary on Netflix, 'The Greatest Showmen', was a very entertaining watch, but it's hard to think it could have portrayed snooker any worse.
When you think the six-episode series was about a sports promotion company that puts on snooker events itself – and has a majority 51 per cent stake in the World Snooker Tour – it was pretty hard to believe.
Boxing was sold to us as basically being an endless thrill ride, with big fights taking place in front of huge crowds, in glamorous cities. Darts was presented as a success story, perhaps enjoying its best period ever thanks to teenage sensation Luke Littler.
As for snooker, there were three proper sections. Two were filmed in Saudi Arabia – for what is effectively a glorified exhibition event – with the second visit focused on the lights going out during a maximum attempt.
The other segment was when Matchroom chairman Eddie Hearn visited the Brentwood Centre for the English Open. Let's be clear, it's not a very good venue. It might be the least appealing on the circuit. And it was mocked pretty mercilessly. Viewers were left in no doubt that this was a low-rent setting. In fact, it almost seemed like it was a nuisance for Hearn to go to there at all.
Why didn't they go to the Crucible for the World Championship? Or at least keep the cameras rolling at Ally Pally after the World Darts Championship and show us the Masters?
It's such a shame as this was a significant chance to sell the sport. Everyone I've spoken to in snooker is disappointed and deflated by it.
I have heard talk of a possible second series in the future. If that does happen, there's a lot of damage that needs to be undone.
