17
‘Ran hard, pace felt fast, slowed down at halfway for a bit then worked hard up the hills.’
My first World Championship in 2001 was so important because it had taken me longer than everybody had thought it would. The pressure was mounting, the longer I went without winning it. I was 25 years old, and beginning to think I’d never do it. So in a way this was the most important and toughest one to win.
Even at 16, when I went on that mad winning run, I still didn’t think I was destined to win the World, despite what everyone was saying – I didn’t know how good the top players were, but I assumed they were a lot better than me.
I just thought I’d play, enjoy the game, see where it took me. It was only much later in life when I’d played all the best players and seen my form dip that I realised how well I was playing in Blackpool as a 16-year-old. I realise now that at 15 or 16 I was playing as good a game as anybody had ever played. But I didn’t know it at the time because I’d not mixed it with the top boys, and I assumed they just didn’t miss.
Before the first World Championship victory, I wasn’t in a good place. Far from it. I was in about as bad a place as it’s possible to be. I was free of addiction so I couldn’t blame it on that. I was winning virtually every tournament I was playing, so I couldn’t blame it on my snooker. But I just felt dark.
I had nothing to say to anybody, low in myself, no confidence. Classic depression. I was just putting on a front all the time. And it got to a point where I just got fed up doing that. I was being interviewed on the radio, and I think they were expecting a nice, bouncy pre-World Championship interview, and I just said: ‘I’m not feeling too good, I’m really struggling, I don’t want to be here.’ They didn’t know how to respond.
The previous night I’d called up the Samaritans, and told them I was desperate. I didn’t give them my name, but I had told them I was a snooker player, was having panic attacks and didn’t want to play any more. There was a lovely girl on the other end of the phone.
‘Do you have to play snooker?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s my life. It’s what I do for my job. I want to be able to play.’
‘Isn’t it more important for you to be healthy?’ she said. ‘Haven’t you ever thought of giving up snooker?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought of giving it up for the last eight years!’ I’d only been professional eight years.
It didn’t sort anything out, but I felt better after calling the Samaritans. I decided there was no point in hiding how I felt, and then it all came out on the radio. After that, I got straight on to the doctor and said I better try the anti-depressants he’d offered me earlier because I had nowhere else to go. I thought I had nothing to lose, so I got the prescription and started taking them at the beginning of the tournament.
It’s a risky thing to do – often people feel shit when they start on anti-depressants for the first couple of weeks, but I couldn’t see any alternative. I stayed on them for a couple of years, and they really worked for me. But I suppose I didn’t want a life’s dependency on anti-depressants – you read stories in the papers about people becoming addicted and it fucking their lives up, so I thought, it’s better getting off them if I can. I always felt I could go back on them if I needed to – a bit like AA and NA. I’d much rather have the natural remedy: that’s why I go and do my runs and get my serotonin boost. I love that feeling of sweating, working hard. Your body’s a machine, and you’ve got to respect it – even if I do occasionally go and blast it. I reckon I blast it for about 10 days a year. That’s about 3 per cent of the year. Not bad. I reckon 20 per cent is just being a lazy bastard sitting on the settee, recuperating, and the rest of the time is keeping fit.
I felt relief more than anything else when I beat John Higgins 18-14 in the final. He’d already won one world title so the pressure was on me to win it. John is a different player from me, but in some ways he’s got the more complete all-round game – he’s more tactical, great break-builder, great potter. He’s a 9 out of 10 in all departments, just a class act.
I think I’ve always been more of an instinctive player, and somehow I stop people playing their natural game. I don’t think I’m a better player than him, but perhaps my style ruffled other players more than his did. John Higgins was always machine-like, and I don’t think opponents felt intimidated by the way he played, which they did – and I hope still do – by me. He was snooker’s equivalent of the Germans at football – they destroy you with efficiency. It might not always look great, but they take you apart, and they’re always tough to play against. With me, it’s much more bang bang bang bang, and it might be over before it started. Maybe I’m more Brazil than Germany.
In 2001, the pills started working really quickly. I became less self-conscious and just got on with the game. I tend not to speak to many people during tournaments, but I was on the phone to Dad loads during the two weeks.
He could hear the difference in my voice. ‘You sound so much better, Ron. They’re obviously working for you. I can hear it in your voice.’ He could also tell that my game was more natural.
‘You’re going for all them long shots,’ he said. ‘Crunching ’em in. I can’t believe some of the shots you’re going for.’ Speaking to him made me feel better too. He didn’t really understand depression, but he could certainly tell I was in better nick.
The final against John was a toughie. I started well, went 6-2 up even though I wasn’t playing great. Then the gremlins crept in. I went 7-2 up, but it was embarrassing, the worst frame of snooker you’ve ever seen from both of us. Then John won the next three frames. 7-5. Jesus. I went in at the interval and said to Del Hill, who was then my manager: ‘What is going on here? I’m having a nightmare. I can’t pot a fucking ball.’
‘Look, just stick in there,’ he said. ‘You’re not playing badly. You’ve missed a few, he’s missed a few and he’ll miss a few more.’ I came out and had a good final session, and on Sunday night I went to bed 10-6 up. Good day’s work. Monday afternoon, I turned it on with breaks of 138, 90 and a couple of half-centuries. 14-7. But then he came back at me. 14-10. The World Championship is like the marathon – it just goes on for ever. Seventeen days of snooker and by the end you’re half dead. You can see it on the players’ faces – those who get through to the last four are normally white by that stage – all that time in the dark, all that pressure, standing up, playing, sitting down, watching, watching, watching. Murder. There’s no sport in which players are so exposed – the cameras zooming in on your face as you’re sitting in your chair, picking your nose, scratching your ears, pawing your face. There’s no escape.
As it happened, the doctor who had prescribed my anti-depressants was watching on the telly, and he phoned up Del.
‘He was watching the match on the telly,’ Del told me. ‘He saw your concentration level was falling. You were fading away.’
‘What d’you mean, fading away,’ I said.
‘Just talk to him, please,’ said Del.
‘I ain’t phoning no one,’ I said.
Del begged me, and finally I agreed.
I wasn’t in the best of moods, mind. ‘Look, what’s the matter?’ I said.
He was lovely, patient, caring. ‘Just take an extra pill. It will help you stay alert. Take one now, and in an hour or two you’ll come alive again.’
He was right. I went 15-10 up, had a mini-wobble in which John got back to 17-14. Just one more frame to go. By then I could already see the headlines about how I’d chucked it all away and couldn’t get over the finishing line. But I did – in the end.
It was a brilliant feeling. John was a gent, and he said the best thing he could have said. ‘Tell your dad, well done. Well done, I’m so pleased for you and your family.’ He knew just how much it meant to me and Dad, and all of us. Mum was in tears.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy. You’ve done brilliant.’ We went back to the tiny changing room. There was me, Mum, Danielle, Jimmy White, Ronnie Wood, his then wife Jo, and everyone was going mad, shouting and wearing the trophy on their head. I was the only calm one in the room.
Three years later, in 2004, I won it for the second time. I was feeling good then, doing my running. That was the year of the long hair and the Alice band. I started off playing well, then got worse as the tournament went on. I cut myself off from people at Sheffield, but there’s always someone who has access to all areas, who can get the teas and coffees in, get the balls out, be there for me if I need to chat.
Although Damien Hirst is the man in the corner these days, along with his PA Sylvia, if they’re not around it will be one of my running mates. It’s just nice to have a friendly face there, someone to play for. At that stage I don’t want anyone there who’s trying to make me a better player or planning for me to conquer the world. I need someone to lighten the mood. Of course, I want to achieve more, but I’d rather do it by having a bit of fun instead of having someone try to find the missing piece in the jigsaw. In the end I’ve got to be the master of my own destiny.
There are so many talkers out there and not many people who walk the walk. When I come across those people who tell me it’s easy and are full of advice I’ll just tell them: ‘Here’s my cue, here’s my hotel room, there’s my suit, catch you later for dinner, good luck, you’ve got John Higgins today, not a bad player.’ They don’t know what to say when you say that to them.
People often ask me which are my most important victories. It’s a tough one because there have been so many and they all mean a lot to me one way or another. But if I was on a desert island and could only take three trophies it would be this lot: the 2012 World Championship – my fourth victory after my horrible run of form for two years – the Champions Cup, when I came out of the Priory in 2000, and the European Open in 2003.
The Champions Cup was the first trophy I won when I was clean in 2000. It’s not a huge tournament, but it was just great playing, feeling well, with a fresh frame of mind and perspective. My third one, the European Open, wasn’t even televised. It was 2003 – again, not a massive tournament, but I played really well and had a great final against Stephen Hendry. I won 9-6, and both of us were on our game – high-scoring, good potting, attacking. It was a flick of a coin in the end.
People often don’t believe me when I say it’s how I play that’s so much more important than whether or not I win and what I win. But it is 100 per cent true. Sure, you want to win the World Junior when you’re a kid, then the World Amateur, then the UK and the World Championship. But for me I’ve got clearer memories of playing Jimmy White at Ronnie Wood’s house than some of the World Championship finals I’ve played in. I’ve had some of my worst times at Sheffield even when I won the World Championship.
In 2004, I beat Graham Dott in the final. I didn’t feel I’d played well, but it was great for the CV. Two-time world champion: that meant a lot to me because just the once can seem like a fluke. I celebrated that one by sticking my Dracula teeth in my mouth. My friend Scouse John said in 2001: ‘If you win it again, will you put these in?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, no worries,’ I said at the time, then I forgot about it.
At the beginning of the tournament, he reminded me. Perhaps he had a feeling.
‘No, no, no, I can’t do it,’ I said.
‘Go on, it will be really funny. It’ll be in the papers,’ he said. ‘And you promised.’
Anyway, I thought it was never going to happen, and I had made the promise three years earlier, so I told him okay.
Everybody thought it was a tribute to Ray Reardon, but it wasn’t. It was just Scouse John’s crazy teeth. I didn’t even realise I looked like Ray, I was just doing it for John.
It was another four years before I won the Worlds again. I remember that for one reason. I thought the authorities were going to come down heavy on me after the noshing incident in China. I thought: ‘Shit, they’re going to ban me, I’d better do something here.’
I made a maxi, and if you watch it on YouTube you can see I had a really clenched fist; that was my way of saying: ‘Right, now try to ban me.’ I thought, I’ve given you a problem now. I’ve done a 147, I’ve set the tournament alight and now you’re going to have to ban me. That was my incentive. It was the tournament just after China, and I was desperate to do well. Winning it was the icing on the cake. After the final, I said: ‘I think I’m probably going to take some time out now.’ I just wanted World Snooker to know that I could take time out if I wanted. But I didn’t in the end.
It’s not as if I’m trying to provoke the snooker authorities. Often I just do silly things because I can’t help myself. And that’s when World Snooker tries to clamp down on me, and I sense a ban coming my way. But it tends to bring the best out of me. In 2004, I got a bit of stick for my attitude and they said I’d been banging the tables and I thought: ‘You know what, you’re trying to pot me off here, you’re trying to dig me out.’ So that was a bit of an incentive to win the Worlds, which I did. So when I won the Worlds in 2008 after China, and when I won the Masters after walking out against Hendry in the UK Championships, it was my way of saying: ‘Fuck you.’ Some of my greatest wins have come after I’ve got myself into trouble.