STAYING AHEAD OF THE CUE
How has your season been so far?
My results haven’t really reflected my form and I’ve played a lot worse over seasons and done better. I think if you drop bellow a certain standard you can lose matches very easily because the standard gets more and more competitive every year. We’ve got a big few months coming up, we’ve got two or three tournaments left before the big world championships, so I’m obviously trying to get my game back to a good standard so that I can go to Sheffield and retain my title.
Consistency seems to play a more important role in snooker than it does in other individual sports like tennis, where your form can undulate throughout the game.
Yes it’s very good point, I think over the last few years if you look at someone like Mark Williams, who two or three years ago was two-time world champion when there were only about 7 or 8 tournaments on the calendar, but 10 years ago when there were 16 tournaments so, like in golf you can play your way into form. At the moment in snooker, there’s a little bit of a gap between each event so it’s very stop start, which means that you can’t get into the sort of rhythm that you would like to. It’s very important to have confidence going into tournaments and the only ones that do are the ones that have been doing really well and winning tournaments, whereas the rest of us have been knocked out a few rounds earlier and go into the next tournament wondering what’s going to happen. If you continue to play lots you would then gradually play yourself into being a tournament winner, I’m sure.
Obviously you’re a year older than you were the last time round, and new challenges are coming through form younger players. How do you prepare for a new season psychologically?
Just roughly what I’ve done throughout my career; try to be at the club every day putting in your 4-5 hours practice because that’s the only way you can succeed in snooker. People have asked me if I’ve been under more pressure since I’ve been world champion. My answer to that is ‘no’ because there are so many great players out there and I don’t think there’s one standing out from the rest, like a Tiger Woods, that would be feeling the pressure of living up to their title of number one player. Although I’ve got the title of world champion and the world number one this year, I’m just part of a group of very good players that, on their day, can be fantastic. I don’t think we’ve got one person from the Steve Davis and the Stephen Hendry mould that stands out, so I personally think it’s good for the game that people can switch it on now and think “who’s going to win here?”
I suppose in the last ten years the likes of myself, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Williams have come through, obviously not to the same extent as a Hendry or a Davis, but we’ve won more tournaments than everybody else, and it just happened to be the case that we all came through at the exact same time so we were sharing tournaments. If Mark Williams and I didn’t come along then Ronnie O’Sullivan would have won more tournaments and vice versa.
Is there a camaraderie amongst the group of players that you’ve just mentioned? Do you get on?
Yes I think everything’s going ok. I think it’s tough because this is a singular sport and you’re trying to win tournaments exactly the same way as these guys so you can’t be too friendly with them, but personally I get on with most of them. I’m just a normal guy that you speak to, I would speak to Steven Hendry the same way I would speak to a guy who’s ranked 100 in the world, it doesn’t make any difference to me where you’re ranked, if you like the guy you get on with him. So yes I get on with everybody.
Do you get any of the younger players approaching you for advice?
Someone like Sean Murphy, the world champion two years ago, he asked if he could come up and practice with me and come to my club, and he was asking me how I approached things. At the time Sean was becoming a really really top player so whilst I didn’t find it uneasy, I did find myself thinking “why is he asking me.” But then you relay it to your wife and she says “well you’re 31 and it’s a complement that someone would want to ask you those things” and then you think “yeah I suppose it’s a complement”. (Laughs) Then you realise that you’re getting older in the game because these people are approaching you for advice and I still think that I’m 20-odd. Then you think back and say “wait a minute you are getting a little bit older” and you’re being looked upon as one of the veterans in the top 16 players–I think I’m the second oldest, behind Steven Hendry–so it’s a little bit daunting that it was 10 years ago that I was one of the youngest ones in the top 16.
Let’s look ahead to Sheffield, you’ve won there and you’ve been runner up as well, so is it still as special this year as it was the first time?
I think that because I’m a father now it maybe doesn’t hold the same sense, simply because you’ve got other things in your life. It’ll always be the world championship and it’ll always be the main tournament and you’ll always be excited, but when you’re older your life just changes and you’ve got different priorities. For instance, my wife’s pregnant and she’s due around the final weekend of the championship. I’ve had two boys before, and the way it’s happened, when they’ve been born, I’ve managed to win the tournaments. I won a Scottish open when my first son was born and then I won the British open when my second was born, so I’m hoping that it might be a lucky omen that I could maybe win the world championship when my wife is due. But there will be things on my mind like “how’s my wife doing”. You’ve got to be focussed for 17 days and I’m obviously going to be thinking that my wife is due around that time, and I’m going to be wondering how she’s feeling, that she’s going to be a bit bigger or that she could go early, so you’ve got other things going on in your mind. Going back to the original point you’ve got to stay as focused as you can, because I think the people that do well at the world championship are the ones that stay the most focused over the 17 days and don’t let anything distract them. I suppose that’s what I’m going to try and do for the 17 days. It’s going to be hard but I’ll give it my best shot.
Good luck either way (laughs). Do you remember your first time at the Crucible?
It was silly old time as well because I was sitting next to one of my friends Alan McManus in the very first round. I think I went in to that tournament as second favourite behind Steven Hendry because I’d had a good season, but this was the first time I was going to be playing at the Crucible. As I walked in I just couldn’t believe how small the venue was and it was the first time I had sat next to my opponent as well. I used to just look up at the lights because when I used to watch Steve Davis and Steven Hendry lifting the world trophy, they were under the bright lights that the Crucible has got. I was just sitting looking at the lights and everything around me and I lost that game 10-3 or 10-4 I think. It was a big wake up call and I came out after and said that I didn’t like the venue and that it was too claustrophobic, obviously just because I’d had a bad defeat. Then over the years you go back and win a little more and you realise that it’s an amazing place to play snooker.
What was it like when you first won the title back in 1998?
It was an uneasy moment. I can remember clearing the final colours against Ken Doherty, I just looked up at the crowd and I could see my mum crying and then I started crying at the table (laughs). It wasn’t heavy tears but deep inside I was getting emotional. When I potted the final ball my dad came out and I cuddled him and it was just an unbelievable moment, that after all the years of watching the great champions, I could not believe that I was standing there under the lights. And I looked up and I could not believe that I was holding the trophy. And then winning it this year was a different feeling, it was a feeling more of relief because I think after winning in ’98, I personally thought I would have won 2 or 3 more. That’s what I though but life’s different and as the years went by and I wasn’t winning it again and I was falling in the rankings, I started thinking that I might never win this again. Personally, I thought I was too good a player to only win it once–not being big headed. It would have been a big disappointment in my career if I’d only won it once so it was more relief than anything. I was 12-4 in front after the first day’s play, and I was trying to go to sleep at night but subconsciously I was thinking “I’ve won this again”. But then during the final day Mark (Selby) clawed it back to 14-13 and there were all sorts of emotions going through my head, and I was thinking “I’m never going to leave my front door again, people are going to be calling me a choker and I might have this tag for the rest of my life”. Although you might have won other tournaments before, in life, people would just remember such a total collapse, and that could have been something that affected my game that I would maybe never have recovered from. All these things were going through my mind and it was amazing that in the end I managed to produce my best snooker of the tournament. And in my eyes, under that extreme pressure I think it just focuses you on giving everything you have.
Who’s the best player you’ve ever played against?
The best player I would say is Ronny O’Sullivan. Obviously guys like Steve Davis and Steven Hendry have won all the titles, but I don’t know if it’s just that he makes it look so easy but he’s one of those players against who I could play my best and still not win, whereas with 99% of the other players I would think I could beat them. He’s such a natural player, he can do things right handed and left handed that other players could only dream about, so talent wise he’s the best player I’ve ever played.
Are you surprised that he hasn’t won this trophy more times than he has?
It’s not because I know for the 17 days you have to be really mentally focused and maybe sometimes Ronny has not really been that focused and lets things get to him. There is a fine line in snooker, although you can be devastating on the table it’s not the type of sport like tennis, where you can play a bad shot and rectify it with the very next one. If you play a bad shot in snooker you can be sitting on your backside for 3 or 4 frames and that can be pretty demoralising sometimes.
When you look back on your career so far, what would be your best performance?
That’s quite hard. I would think one of the matches that stands out is when I played Mark Williams, who at the time was the world champion and the world number 1, and beat him 10-4 in the final of the UK championships. That was a big one for me because I think the previous year I’d lost a big lead to him. I was 14-10 up in the semi-finals of the world championship and I lost 17-15, so that was a pretty demoralising defeat. To play him again the following year in the UK championships, which was a big tournament, and to get my revenge–that stands out for me.
Now a quick switch of sport to Poker; do you find there are similarities between the games?
I think they’re very similar. Luckily enough I’ve played the 888.com UK Poker Open and it’s amazing that you still feel the nerves and you’ve got to think a few moves in front, like if you put your money into the pot you have to think what somebody else is going to do. There is also a lot of bottle involved in it as well, if you've got the bottle to stick the chips in and see what the other person does. I find it a sport that I could sit down with the best player in the world and I’d fancy beating them. If I played him 100 times he might beat me 90 or 95 times but there are very few sports where anybody could sit down with the best in the world and have a chance of winning. I think that attracts everybody; that you could sit down and knock out the best player in the world.
When did you start playing?
I started playing about 4 years ago. I’d seen some other snooker players playing it on the tour. I sat down and had a game and it was just addictive, it got your concentration straight away. Everybody does it, and it’s a good way of spending a few hours when you’re on the tour, as long as the stakes aren’t astronomical it’s ok.
So have you had any successes at poker yet?
It’s funny, I wouldn’t call it a success but I got heads up in an online tournament, I had 2/3 of the chips and for the one and only time during the tournament I bottled it and changed the way I was playing. I ended up trying to protect the chips instead of at least having a go. Even if he had moved all-in behind, I could have got lucky with a card, but I just bottled it and kept the chips. Then I went behind and lost a big pot to a hand that ultimately crucified me. That was a hard lesson that basically taught me that you’ve got to just go for it and see where it takes you.
So finally what would be your advice to any aspiring young snooker players?
I think you’ve got to get the basics right. It’s a bit like myself playing golf–I’ve never got the basics right and once you get into a routine and pick up bad habits it’s hard to get out of it, especially if you haven’t got the time to practice. So firstly get the basics right then try and play as many good players as possible. That’s what I did when I was younger. I just wanted to play the best players in my club and the best players in Scotland. I don’t know if I knew subconsciously then but I knew roughly that it would help me. If I lost to someone 4 or 5 days in a row I would go back on the 6th day and ask him for another game because I just wanted to beat him, and I think subconsciously it helped because you were learning from them. You might not have realised at the time but you must have been because a few months later you manage to hold your own and then maybe go on and beat them. That’s what I would say–always play someone better than you. You sometimes see it in clubs that guys don’t like to play someone better and lose–they want to turn round and have the bragging rights, but guys like that will never get far because they’re never learning the right things. So always play someone better than you.
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