Tweet
Ssb - alex higgins: Gone but not forgotten
Amid all the drama on the table this year, it should also be remembered that snooker lost one of its key figures during 2010.Alex Higgins died in July at the age of 61. His final years were sad but his reputation as the most remarkable player of the boom years remains undimmed.
There has never been anyone quite like Alex. This is probably a good thing.
When he died there were the usual tributes but even they were tinged with raw honesty: Higgins was often a nightmare to be around and at times could be deeply unpleasant.
But Snooker Scene also received letters from those who had witnessed his kindness: ranging from visits to hospitals to spend time with sick children that had never been publicised to a few drinks in the pub with fans.
The Hurricane was a mass of contradictions but, to the end, he was uncompromisingly his own man. He died from malnutrition due to not eating properly. Jimmy White and others had tried to tell him...but they knew you couldn’t tell Alex anything. He always did things his own way.
What he brought to snooker, more than anything, was the people. His electrifying style of play, his addiction to controversy and trouble and the sense of the unexpected saw the public come to snooker in droves.
The BBC only began covering the World Championship in the mid 1970s because he was in it. A few years later they began covering it live and still do so to this day.
I know many people in the snooker world who loathed Higgins but none of them would argue with his importance to the sport and its development.
White and Ronnie O’Sullivan are, to an extent, cut from the same cloth as Higgins in terms of their natural talent and vivid private lives but neither trod the path of self destruction like he did.
White is gracious, friendly and always puts on a show for his fans.
O’Sullivan, though prone to extreme mood swings, lives quietly and has won far more than Higgins, who seemed to relish snooker most when it became a high wire act where the line between death or glory was as fine as it could be.
Even in death Higgins is said to be causing trouble: the woman who moved into his flat has claimed to newspapers that he is haunting her.
But he should be remembered not for all the aggro, though that was an intrinsic part of his character, but for his achievements on the table.
Nobody knew what had hit them when he won the 1972 World Championship at his first attempt at a time in which professional snooker was bouncing along the bottom of the sporting ocean.
When he won it for a second time ten years later it was a major television attraction, largely due to him.
Alex Higgins may never have set out to change snooker forever but he did and for that the game should be eternally grateful.
More...
Comment