Hendry - Me and the Table: My Autobiography

May 2012, Sheffield, UK World Snooker Championship (quarter-final)

I m sitting actually, Im almost sagging in my dressing room backstage at the Crucible Theatre as I reflect on the missed pink that has allowed my opponent to snatch the fourth frame. I guess Im embarrassed, though in truth Im past crucifying myself for stupid mistakes like the one Ive just made. The collective intake of breath from the audience at the miss only confirms in my mind what I already know; that after seven World Championship wins, five UK Championships, six Masters wins and a whole bunch of other triumphs and records broken, my game is gone. Now its time for me to go with it.

Why, after a run of poor performances following my last World Championship win more than ten years previously, am I still here? Im now out of the top sixteen in the rankings; this seasons championship is the first one Ive had to qualify for since I was a teenager. After everything Ive achieved, to have to do this feels beneath me. The qualifiers are not played at the Crucible but at Sheffields Institute of Sport, in a hall with around six tables and only a small audience attending. I dont mean to take anything away from those Im playing against in these preliminary rounds, but this isnt what Im used to. When youve beaten almost every record in the game, knocking balls around a table in an uninspiring hall is a humiliating and depressing experience. At this stage I just want to qualify, saving whats left of my snooker for the main event. Im up against the Chinese player Yu Delu. Its not pretty snooker. My only thought is about getting to the ten frames. I play solidly, aiming to win as quickly as I can, just to make it to the Crucible.

Im glad Im through, and for this reason: I have already made the decision that this will be my last World Championship. In fact, it will be my last tournament ever in professional snooker. Ive decided to retire. Ive talked to Mandy, my wife, about it and she agrees that Im not playing as well as I used to.

If youre not winning or enjoying it any more, she says, whats the point of carrying on?

I dont disagree. Neither am I sorry. In fact, Im relieved relieved that I will no longer have to play in public the kind of snooker Ive been playing. I wont have to go through the tedious motions of practice day in, day out, which I havent really been doing anyway. Since turning professional Id always practised in the same club, the John Spencers, in Stirling, but when this was sold I needed somewhere else to go. The solution seemed obvious: to convert the triple-garage adjacent to my house into a practice room. This was done, and the space was made as comfortable as possible. Too comfortable, in fact. Ill set off to practice at about 11am the time Ive always stuck to and do an hour before its tea-break time. The radio or TV hums away nicely in the background, and what is meant to be a quick break becomes fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour and sometimes an entire afternoon. Then Ill say to myself, Ach, no worries Ill just do it again tomorrow. All my discipline, intensity and focus has gone in one easy move. Ive always thought of practice as going to work now it is something I do if I feel like it.

Also, I wont have to play in a series of smaller tournaments Im not interested in, just to keep in the rankings. Ive convinced myself that I can no longer play as well as I used to, and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every time I miss a ball or lose a match I think, There you go told you so. Youre not up to it. Your games gone. And it has. It truly has.

Back in the auditorium, as I sit in my chair, enviously watching my opponent at the table, the surroundings of the Crucible Theatre disappear, to be replaced by a TV studio in Birmingham. The year is 1983, and a small-for-his-age fourteen-year-old Scottish boy is about to make his screen debut playing snooker. Its the quarter-final of Junior Pot Black, the under-sixteens version of the hugely popular BBC snooker knockout series. This kid has made it to the quarter-finals through sheer determination. Hes only been playing the game for about eighteen months, but already hes won the Pontins Star of the Future snooker tournament and the Scottish and British Under-16s Championships. He has natural talent, sure, but there is something else at work here the will to win, and win well. No prizes for guessing who this wee boy is.

At the age of fourteen Im playing for the sheer love of the game and the fun of it. Everything about my playing style is totally natural. My stance, the way I cue, the determination to clear up as quickly as possible, never giving my opponent a second chance its all intuition and learning from watching snooker on TV. I need to use the rest often because of my size (as commentator Ted Lowe helpfully points out) but even as a raw kid Im aggressively break-building, going for everything with a fearlessness that doesnt quite sit right on an awkward teenager who looks about ten.

My dad, Gordon, is at Pebble Mill to see my first appearance on TV. He watches all my early games. Dad is my kind-of manager and driver and, with my mum Irene and brother Keith, my biggest supporter.

Our Stephens gonna be World Champion one day, hell say to anyone who cares to listen.

Both he and my mum are innocently confident this will happen. They arent pushy they know that at my age anything can change, and that one morning I might wake up and totally lose interest in the whole thing. But I doubt it, and so do they.

I win the Junior Pot Black quarter-final convincingly, beating my opponent 7023. But in the semi-final I go out to a cocky kid a few years older than me. Im devastated. Im asked a few interview questions after the game and I can barely get my words out, so choked up am I. Even so, when the experience of losing is behind me I realise that Ive enjoyed every minute of that tournament and want to do it again. And again, and again.

What a contrast to now a dejected, depressed-looking former champion trying and failing to hang on to past glories. And yet, despite myself, in the first round of this World Championship I make a maximum break during the game against Stuart Bingham. Its my eleventh professional 147, setting a personal record. Bingham misses an easy red to the left-middle pocket and in I go. For the length of this break Im on fire again. Five or six shots in I get the feeling that I can make the maximum and the magic returns as I concentrate and stay focused. This is how I used to be for an entire tournament. Now it is for just a few minutes, but when it happens the will to win overrides everything else. I taste the anticipation as the crowd senses something major is brewing. During the break there are flashes of the old me keen to quickly pot again even as the referee is placing the ball back on the spot and when I see off the final black I pump my fist in the air to the cheering crowd. And so we have a delighted audience and praise from the commentators, and I take home around 50,000 in bonus money for my efforts. Should I be overjoyed? Of course I should. Who wouldnt be? And I am its a 147 break that has required ten minutes or so of pure adrenalin and focus. But in my heart I know that out of the thirty-six shots it takes to make the maximum, Im only happy with about five or six of them. When I pot the first black I barely shift the pack of reds. In years gone by Id have sent them scattering, allowing them to be picked off easily. Nonetheless, Im celebrating with uncharacteristic emotion its because I know I will never repeat such a feat at this venue.

Who says hes not the player he was!? shouts TV commentator John Virgo.

Me I say it.

I win the match 104 and in the second round Im facing John Higgins. John is a one of the games greats and I worry that hell humiliate me. Id have never let such a thing trouble me in the past, but even as I reach the table Im fretting about my concentration and my courage. Luckily, John is having a real off-day. The game is scrappy for both of us, although we both make century breaks. If anything, John is under more pressure than I am because hes the defending World Champion, and perhaps because he and I have never played each other at the Crucible. This is or was my turf. It has been the setting for my greatest games and the place that sealed my reputation. So for various reasons John has something to prove, whereas Im not certain I do any more. Later, John says its the worst hes ever played at the Crucible and I believe him. I beat him 134 and to my astonishment Im into the quarter-final against Stephen Maguire.