End of an era as Hendry makes Crucible farewell

Stephen Hendry was a bad loser and after a decade battling to capture the glory years of the Nineties he finally got tired of losing to players who, in his prime, he would have annihilated.

After a glorious career, dominating the sport for a golden decade, the 43-year-old’s final tournament match came in Tuesday’s quarter-final defeat to countryman Stephen Maguire.

A 13-2 loss was a bitter pill to swallow, but this was no knee-jerk reaction. In an exclusive interview with the Yorkshire Post before this year’s Betfred.com World Championship, Hendry revealed to me how he was struggling to cope with life outside the elite top 16, the “culture shock” of tough qualifying rounds just to reach tournaments and how he was already planning for life away from the snooker tour.

The youngest ever world champion at 21, he went on to a record seven Crucible crowns - a feat unlikely to be broken - and was world No 1 for eight consecutive years from 1990 to 1998.

Chalking up 36 world ranking titles, Hendry was a born winner. Even in his farewell appearance at the Crucible, the scene of so many of his finest moments in the game, he managed a maximum 147 break and knocked out defending world champion John Higgins to finish on a high.

After spending a record 23 seasons in the top 16, it was time to walk away.

“I have played in front of packed halls, Wembley, two-and-a-half thousand people crowds, all around the world,” Hendry told me.

“Then you come to qualifiers and you play in a little cubicle with no people watching. It is a culture shock and I can’t say that I enjoy it.

“My best result (before this year’s World Championship) is probably beating Neil Robertson 4-1 in the Welsh Open, but you have to say it’s kind of depressing when you have to look at single matches as your best performance.

“I have had a fantastic career and have nothing to prove, but I am in sport to win and to count a performance as just winning first-round matches is not what I am about.”

After his defeat to Maguire, Hendry revealed he had been considering hanging up his cue this season.

“It was not a spur-of-the-moment thing,” he stressed. “I thought about it last year but two or three months ago I just decided enough was enough.

“I haven’t got a lot of things to regret in my career.

“Obviously it’s sad that your last match is a 13-2 drubbing but that was just the way it went. At least it wasn’t 13-0.

“I haven’t been able to play the way I’ve wanted to play for the last 10 years, and it’s just ground me down and down and down.

“I keep getting beaten in first rounds and second rounds by people I still know are not as good as me. After a while it becomes too much.

“I think I’ve had a decent career.”

Before jetting out last month to compete in the China Open, Hendry - whose last ranking event win was the Malta Cup seven years ago - had already been to the Far East three times in 2012.

He has built up strong business links in the Far East, he is the global embassador for Chinese Pool – “it is like our eight-ball but on a three-quarter size snooker table” .

“Snooker has always been popular there,” he said. “The first time I went in about 1988, it was popular with good crowds. But it has just grown and grown and with players like Ding Junhui being one of the top players, it has just increased the popularity. In China, I am almost more recognised than I am in the UK.”

Thinking back to last month’s interview, Hendry laughed at me when I asked him if he would like to follow in the footsteps of one his fiercest rivals, Steve Davis, and keep playing professionally into his fifties.

“I will still be playing snooker, whether it’s things like the Legends Tour – I don’t think I will ever put the cue down in my life, I love the sport – but in terms of playing competitively at 50, not a chance,” he said.

Four-times Crucible champion Higgins summed it up perfectly. “Davis loves snooker, Hendry loves winning.”