It'll be like a scene from BBC television series ‘Pot Black' when Tauranga Citizens Club snooker members pick up their cues for the New Zealand Masters Snooker National Championships this weekend.

But they won't be in their jeans, jandals and T-shirts – the dress code is far more formal.

Tauranga Citizens Club snooker sub section players Scotty Friend and Darryl Jensen. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

'One of the things we do insist on is we keep a standard of dress,” says snooker player Darryl Jensen.

'We wear bow ties and business-style shirts, buttoned at the collar and the sleeves. We wear a waistcoat, dress trousers and dress shoes. It's a standard we like to keep.”

Wearing his best suit and bow tie, Darryl will join around 80 masters snooker players from throughout the North Island at the Tauranga Citizens Club for the free tournament on August 21-23.

'This tournament would be one of the biggest snooker tournaments of its type in the country,” says Darryl.

'It always is because we have the facility to handle it. We have six tables there on a permanent basis, and for the tournament we hire out another six tables.”

Darryl started playing snooker at age 16. 'It looked like fun,” he says. It's as simple as that.

'I don't know how or why or whatever, it's just something that happened when I was a kid.”

But he's only recently picked up his cue again after a 40-year break.

'I'm always practising,” says Darryl. 'I'm trying to catch up on the 40 years that I wasn't playing.

'I only just decided to take it up again last year because I saw all the tables and thought: ‘I wonder if can still play?'”

And he can. But is he still as good as he was at 16? 'There's a lot of debate around that kind of thing,” says Darryl.

'It's just different. There's a hell of a lot of years under the bridge. The game's approached differently.”

Darryl plays a competitive type of game, and he's got his eye on the championship title this weekend.

'To my way of thinking, you never go into a tournament without thinking you've got some kind of show of getting somewhere,” he explains.

'However, you've also got another 79 or so people all thinking the same way.”