‘You get there and you’re looking at the next thing,’ Jones told Metro. ‘No matter what, it’s like you’re never happy.’
The 30-year-old sprung a string of surprises as he came though qualifying all the way to the World Championship final where he was beaten 18-14 by Kyren Wilson.
It was the first final of his professional career and the £200,000 he won was by a long stretch his biggest payday, but the competitor in him meant he couldn’t really celebrate the brilliant run.
‘They did something small in the club I play in, that was nice, but it’s strange celebrating losing in a final,’ said Jones. ‘Although it was big, when I was there it didn’t feel big to me, it didn’t feel like I’d achieved something massive. Other people would say that it was, but I just felt strange celebrating losing.’
The Welshman is not alone among snooker players in struggling to find happiness in their performances. They expect to play well, so experience frustration when they don’t but not necessarily elation when they do.
‘Because I’ve played since I was 10 or 11 years old, I just don’t feel like it’s that big,’ Jones explained. ‘You’re constantly playing snooker every day. When you go through a bad patch you feel it, you’re struggling and it’s bothering you, but if I do something good I don’t feel like it is good. I feel like I’m practicing every day so that’s what I should be doing it.
‘Maybe if I’d been flying through the tournament I might have felt something. I felt like I played well in my last qualifier against Zhou Yuelong but apart from that match I didn’t play well at all, which in some ways has given me a lot of confidence. I’ve got to a World final, four frames from being world champion where I haven’t played well. If I do play well then I can do it. It gives me a lot of confidence in that sense.’
Jones leapt from number 44 in the world to 14, but again it doesn’t feel like enough and he wants to forge on further, not satisfied with that position.
‘That part of it is obviously nice, I haven’t been that high in the rankings before,’ he said. ‘But before I’d done it I felt like if I could be there it would be amazing. Then you get there and you’re looking at the next thing. I need to go higher, push on further. No matter what, it’s like you’re never happy.
‘I suppose that’s how the top players work. They win tournaments but they’re never happy, they want more. It’s given me the motivation, I’ve had a taste of what it’s like and I’m more motivated to practice hard and have more moments like it.’
Jones’ run to the Crucible final followed a quarter-final appearance a year earlier, but other than that his professional career has produced few highlights, so the next step is to replicate those brilliant results in Sheffield across the season.
On why he has struggled for consistency he said: ‘I’ve had a lot of things going on off the table over the last couple of years. You see players playing on the TV and you don’t know what’s going on off the table. I’ve struggled with that.
‘Obviously everyone goes through things in life, some people handle it better than other people, but hopefully that’s behind me and I can move forward now. When you feel good it’s hard enough, but when you don’t it can be an absolute nightmare.
‘Last season I lost a load of deciders. I don’t think I played bad, I played ok but just kept losing deciders and that takes its toll. It’s not good for your confidence, but hopefully I’ve learned from it.
‘You can play terrible and win a match but all you take is positives, you feel good and forget all the bad things that happened in the match. But you can play really well, lose and look for what was wrong, but there was nothing wrong, you just lost a close match.’
Jones has proved he is a man for the big stage and is hoping the opportunities to play in events like the Shanghai Masters, Champion of Champions and Masters will continue to bring the best out of him.
‘You’re playing qualifiers constantly behind closed doors, just your opponent and the referee. When you play in the Worlds it inspires you, motivates, but qualifiers are quite hard to get up for,’ he said.
‘Then you lose a couple of close matches and it gets worse and worse, your confidence goes and you end up hating the game.
‘It’ll be amazing to play in all the events I’ve never played in before. All the top 16 events are massive, that’s where you want to play and that’s where I feel better, I’m happier, I feel like I belong in those tournaments.
‘You’ve got to earn the right to be there, you can’t just say you belong there, but when I play in that kind of situation is when I feel good. I feel like a completely different player, a completely different person to when you’re in qualifiers.
‘I had no idea how I’d feel when I first got to the Crucible. People say players either collapse or shine, so the fact I go there and feel the way I do is a big thing.’
Big tournaments are to come for Jones and things have already started to change for him since the Crucible, called up to play in the Helsinki International Snooker Cup this month, an exhibition event featuring the likes of Wilson and Judd Trump and won by Ali Carter.
‘You can see the difference already with people contacting you about exhibitions and sponsorship, everything changes,’ he said. ‘Going from #44 to the top 16 is a big jump, you go from one extreme to the other, it’s good.
‘I’ve only ever done one exhibition! I’ve never been a big fan of them to be honest. The one I did went really well but I tend to just put people off when people ask me. It’s not something I’ve really thought about doing.’
One of 10 siblings (with eight brothers and a sister), Jones has been wary of involvement from outsiders over his career so far although knows this may have to change after his Crucible heroics.
‘You get let down a lot. You meet a lot of not great people. People who say they can do this and that but can’t do anything,’ he said. ‘When you get to the top it’s different, so now I’m getting towards that level it should be interesting.
‘I’ve thought similarly about managers. You meet those type of people. I’ve not got a good head for people letting me down. Saying they can do things when they can’t. It puts me off and I’d rather just do everything on my own or with my family rather than trying to get extra money. I’d rather be happy and satisfied.
‘I understand why some of the top players have their family around them rather than what you might think would be more professional people. You meet a lot of people who don’t have your best interest at heart, so I understand keeping a close and small circle around you.’
It is a close-knit unit for the Jones family as Jak and wife Inna live with his parents and have no plans to change that despite the handsome earnings from Sheffield.
‘Obviously it’s a lot more than I’ve won before and a lot of people have asked me about it, but I’ve realised I’m not that bothered about money,’ he said.
‘I’m not into buying expensive cars or doing crazy things. I’ll just be exactly the same, so it just gives you more security. It’s better obviously, better than having no money, but I haven’t really thought about it.
‘I quite like living with my parents, it’s probably not great saying that at the age of 30, but it’s all good at the moment.’
Beating the likes of Judd Trump and Stuart Bingham took Jones to the World Championship final but the dream run became a nightmare in the opening session against Wilson, losing the first seven frames after a night of no sleep beforehand.
The Welshman impressively battled back into the game, but had left himself too much to do after the disaster of Sunday afternoon.
‘I think every time I won two or three frames to get back into the match I missed an easy ball that could have really got me back into it,’ he said. ‘But when you’re 7-0 down I’d given myself too much to do.
‘Kyren played the best through the whole tournament. I don’t think there were many players on form, but him and Dave Gilbert were probably the two who were on form. Even at 7-0 down I still believed I could win the match, but that first session cost me big time.’
Jones got back within three frames on three occasions but could not close the gap any further. He remembers a big moment with the score at 16-11 when the frame came down to the final black and Wilson sent it round the angles and into the corner pocket.
The 30-year-old insists it was a fluke and was huge for the eventual champion at a time when Jones felt Wilson was starting to really struggle.
‘That was a big frame,’ said Jones. ‘I felt like I was cueing well, like I could get back into the match. I noticed Kyren’s concentration wasn’t what it was.
‘I knew that every ball he missed it would get harder for him and he started noticing things with the crowd. Maybe because I was behind they were supporting me. He wasn’t taking it too well, he was complaining to the referee a bit about certain people in the crowd. I noticed he was going a little bit.
‘I think maybe one or two shots if I’d played better could have changed it. But that frame with the black ball game, I think he probably needed that at that moment.
‘Never in a million years was he playing that. He didn’t put his hand up. Some people said he played it, but I’ll tell you for a fact it wasn’t played. He’s played the cocked hat safety, round the angles. It’s hard enough playing that shot into the middle, but into the corner I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player play that. He’s mis-hit it and it’s gone in. I think he didn’t apologise because he was feeling it, it was such a big moment.
‘There were things I noticed Kyren doing in the match that he would never normally do, just behavioural things, because of the pressure of the moment. Just little things, at the time they kind of annoy you, but looking back it’s just the pressure. There was probably more pressure on him because he’d been in the final before and then being so far ahead, when I made it closer he was feeling it a bit.
‘Obviously you feel pressure in the match or you wouldn’t be human. I could sense it big time, from the second half of the night session, he was feeling it a bit. But he held himself together in the last frame to make that break.’
Jones will be playing in everything he can this season, starting with the Championship League, as he looks to take the next step and win his first title as a professional.
‘If I could win something that would be amazing,’ he said. ‘The sooner the better but it’s not easy. There are some really good players who still haven’t done it. But it’s the next thing.’
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