Monday 2 May 2022 The Guardian •••
31Immune to pressure
O’Sullivan has
achieved perfection
but Hendry still
stands alone
Y
ou may have seen the famous clip of
Diego Maradona’s warm-up routine,
from the second leg of Napoli’s Uefa
Cup semi-fi nal against Bayern Munich
in 1989: the one where he is like a
Marvel superhero with a football. It is
not just that Maradona pogos up and
down with the ball seemingly glued to
his head. Or that he eff ortlessly juggles the ball on his
knees while jogging – before upping the ante by then
bouncing it repeatedly off alternate shoulders. It is
that the greatest player of all time is doing all this, and
many other tricks and fl icks, with his shoelaces untied.
Maradona’s extraordinary routine , which has been
viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube, came to
mind again while watching another renegade master,
Ronnie O’Sullivan, caress, fi nesse and blast his way to
another world snooker fi nal. For retired professional-
turned-pundit Alan McManus, the Rocket’s red and
black combination against John Higgins were the best
two shots back-to-back he has seen in a semi-fi nal ,
while these eyes slightly preferred the blunt power of
a red to the middle against Stephen Maguire. Either
way, O’Sullivan has a rare knack of making the ball
dance to his tune, just like El Diego.
And if he does win a magnifi cent seventh world title
by converting his 12-5 lead over Judd Trump later today- a feat that would equal Stephen Hendry’s record – the
clamour for him to be ordained as the greatest ever
will become a crescendo. I am not quite there – yet.
O’Sullivan is a genius. But I still make Hendry primus
inter pares, by a squeak.
Let me build a case. It starts by pointing out that
no one else in the modern era can hold a cue to what
Hendry did in the 1990s, when he ruled the sport and
was the youngest world champion in history at 21.
Back in the late 90s, in my early days as a journalist on
Total Sport, I visited Hendry’s club in Stirling for our
Show Us Your Medals section. There were so many –
70 titles in total – that we had to settle on just a dozen.
He was that dominant.F
or good measure Hendry also spent a
record-breaking nine years as world
No 1, ahead of Steve Davis on seven.
O’Sullivan, whose career began 30
years ago, has spent fi ve years on top.
In the past fortnight there has been
a lot of talk about the “Class of 92” –
O’Sullivan, Higgins and Mark Williams.
And rightly so. But Hendry, in his prime, often took
them to school. Back then Hendry could pot with
the best of them and he was also blessed with a
natural immunity to pressure. Never was that better
illustrated when, 30 years ago this week, he came
from 14-8 down to defeat Jimmy White 18-14 and win
the 1992 world title in what Clive Everton described
on these pages as the “most dramatic and emphatic
recovery seen in a Crucible fi nal”.
Perhaps the crucial moment came at 14-9 down as
Hendry, with the cue ball in the jaws of the middle
pocket, rolled in a brilliant brown. “Had he missed it
he would have certainly trailed 15-9,” wrote Everton.
“But by potting it he showed he was not intimidated
by the score, the opponent, the occasion or the huge
crowd largely rooting for White.” History repeated
itself in 1993 when Hendry thrashed White 18-5 in the
world championship fi nal, having lost only 25 frames
in fi ve matches. That was a staggering enough feat.
But the Scot was able to surpass it in 1994, beating
White 18-17 in the fi nal despite fracturing an elbow
while going to the bathroom in the middle of the night
earlier in the tournament. It only solidifi ed the image
of Hendry as snooker’s Terminator: a cold-blooded
destroyer even with one arm barely functioning.
And Hendry did all this despite never being a darling
of the masses, like the Rocket or Whirlwind. We hear
a lot of talk about the benefi ts of home advantage in
sport but Hendry usually had the crowd against him- and worse. Facing White at Wembley was particularly
bad. “I always have people shouting
‘miss’ underneath their breath when
I’m right on the shot and stuff like
that,” Hendry told me, before saying:
“I’ve had a lot of success there, so I
can’t say it put me off .”
Yet after Hendry’s seventh and
fi nal world title in 1999, something
changed. In an interview with
Donald McRae on these pages in
2018 he admitted that, when he
began to socialise with the other
players, it “aff ected his invincibility”- although he attributed his decline
more to a serious version of a golfer’s
yips , which began in 2000.
Inevitably it means there is a
recency bias towards O’Sullivan
when the topic of the greatest comes up. But last
week O’Sullivan himself acknowledged just how good
Hendry was in his prime, saying: “He used to play
six hours a day and didn’t miss a ball. There is no one
dominating the sport like he did, like Tiger Woods did.”
It says something of the class of both men that Hendry
was just as eff usive about O’Sullivan. “No one does it
better,” he said. “You cannot play better snooker than
that. He is just supreme in all departments.”
It is hard to argue. But my mind keeps coming back
to a match the two men played in the 1997 Liverpool
Victoria Charity Challenge, which featured seven
centuries and is widely regarded as one of the best
ever. Hendry went 8-2 up in a best -of-17 encounter.
O’Sullivan pulled it back to 8-8. The Scot’s response?
To hit a match-winning 147.
- although he attributed his decline
Sean Ingle
With an
elbow
fractured
in the 1994
fi nal he still
beat White.
It solidifi ed
Hendry’s
image as
snooker’s
Terminator▲ In 1990 Stephen
Hendry defeated
Jimmy White and
became, at 21, the
youngest snooker
world champion
PARugby union
England’s grand
slam winners
want even more
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on track for title
after derby draw
Page 39