Running: The Autobiography (9 page)

What would I prefer – to lose and enjoy or win and be unhappy?

LOSE AND ENJOY!

Thursday 7th

Got up, felt like the chimp was at me. Telling me you’re not consistent, that you’re gonna start mistiming balls. I let him have his say, and then said, right, now I’m gonna give you some logic. I’m enjoying the game and I want to play, I have been feeling really good about my game recently. I’m thinking a lot clearer, I’m with Steve now, I understand the chimp, and you’re telling me SHIT. I’m not going to panic, I’m one of the most successful players ever. No one thinks I’m bad because I play a bad shot
or frame or match or even a bad year, so it’s all nonsense. I’m going to do my best, that’s what I’m telling myself. The chimp went quiet, my mind started to think very clearly.

Tuesday 24th

Woke up, chimp was there. Not as bad as morning before. He was saying, your right hand/arm will lose its accuracy.

Thursday 29th

Got up. Chimp was talking to me, saying my right arm is not going through the ball correctly, it’s mistiming, not solid, cutting across the ball, your right arm is not in sync with your body. The chimp would not go away. I could not get out of bed at the thought of it. I felt him have his say, then tried to give him some answers . . . I ended up going for a run.

Chimp was telling me my stance and technique let me down, chimp was telling me after the game that if you play like that you won’t win a tournament. Forget it!! Felt quite panicky in the evening when I got home.

Keeping the diary made me feel better. It is really useful to look back at, too – if painful. It’s a reminder of just how possessed I can be by this self-destructive demon, and how pointless the quest for perfection is.

Sometimes there were no dates.

Got up chimp is on me. Again. I can’t stop thinking what went wrong with my game, pains in my chest, shallow breathing. That’s how it feels. (After beating Judd 3-2 in Prem League then losing 3-1 to Ding.)

There’s a scrappy entry, accompanied by a happy face.

No snooker, three weeks off. Loved not playing.

Then there’s an ecstatic entry in capital letters alongside a huge happy face.

17 DAYS SNOOKER

WON THE WORLD CHAMPS

UNBELIEVABLE

NICE REST REQUIRED

DON’T BURN OUT

That was in May 2012, just after I’d won my fourth World Championship. But, of course, by the beginning of the next season the chimp was back, tapping me on the shoulder or staring me in the face, telling me I was shite.

NEW SEASON

Started practice. That felt good for a few days, then the new gremlins/goblins/chimp started again. Long deep thoughts crept back in, which disconnect me from the real world. Can I handle this stuff? Do I want to handle this stuff?

Now I’m gonna list the gremlins/goblins!

Shoulder gets stiff and feels bunched when I’m not playing.

Think I’m gonna lose it, my game is not strong enough.

They’re expecting me to win now. Waiting for me to fall again.

Should have gone out on a high.

Gotta fly to China 3 times etc.

I know it must read like madness to most people, but this is what goes through my head, and has been doing for the past 20 years. And I know it might seem like even more madness to write it down in diary form, but actually the diary advised by Dr Steve has done so much to keep me sane. The results speak for themselves.

7

TOP OF THE WORLD:
SHEFFIELD 2012

‘Sunday morning, Epping Forest, easy eight and a half miles. 62 minutes, seven and a half minute miling.’

Then came Sheffield. Bang! It was the best tournament I’ve played in my life. It smashed all the other world titles I’ve played into pieces. None compare. I felt every moment of that tournament because of the work I’d done with Dr Steve. Before going to Sheffield I was in his house near Sheffield saying, I don’t fancy this; I don’t think I can do this. There’s a diary of all the work I’ve done with him, and I did work really hard.

When I first came to see him, he told me, you’ll only get out of this what you put in. The more you practise, the better you get kind of thing. So I wanted to learn all the skills he could teach me, but sometimes I couldn’t take it all in. I’d be writing stuff down as I was talking to him, then I read his book,
The Chimp Paradox
, which helped me make sense of his theory about how we sabotage ourselves and how to manage it. But despite all the work I’d done with him, I was still me. So of course I had major doubts. I was petrified, convinced I was going to get beaten first round. I had Peter Ebdon and
thought, that’s the worst draw I could get. As soon as I saw the draw I thought, oh no, he’s going to torture me again. Psycho has always been a great competitor – and a lovely fella despite the scary appearance.

So Steve and I started preparing for Sheffield. I’d spend between an hour and three hours with him each session, depending on how much I could take in and how much time he had. The most important thing he taught me was the ability to put behind me what would normally have festered for a long time – i.e. that’s a bad shot but I’m not going to let that carry on into the next shot. My natural thought process was, you hit a bad shot, you’re shit, your cueing’s crap, you can’t hit the ball, you’re going to get beat, boom! Then you’d be 8-1 down, and think, well, I’m out any way, so I’d start playing well the next session, and make a game of it and lose 13-9. But really the damage was done in the first session. He gave me the ability to play a bad shot but have enough knowledge of what I’d been working on to reinforce what I knew about myself – I was three-time world champion, four-time Masters champion, four-times UK champion. I had to reinforce all those elements because I was always frightened of the worst thing happening, and assumed it would do. I had to say, well, that can happen, you can lose, the other fella is capable of beating you, but you could also win this match. I had to look at the facts in my favour – my game very rarely deserted me, these players are good but I have a better record against them than they have against me.

I had to keep reinforcing these thoughts so I wasn’t scared of going into these situations.

Once I got out there to play that was the easy part. It was the build-up I struggled with; coming away, having time to think about what had gone on and how I’d play in the next session.
I had to learn how to manage the time between matches and between sessions. And I think that’s why ultimately I enjoyed 2012 at Sheffield more than any other because there were times when my game wasn’t great but I stuck with it, and I came out of it thinking, I’m only 5-3 behind or 4-4, and the next session I found my game and would win six frames on the trot. So with the help of Steve I learnt the ability to feel present in every session and absorb every emotion. Every time I panicked I controlled it. I didn’t rush or go for stupid shots because I was getting frustrated; I played every shot on its merit, then once I found my rhythm I started to dominate games. And when my game wasn’t great I didn’t let it affect me.

Steve showed me there was a more adult way of dealing with the emotional side of my brain.

He said: ‘This part of your brain will never change. All you can do is manage it, and if you don’t practise managing it every day your emotional side will take over again and you’ll end up in the same place you were when you first came to see me. You’ve had twenty years of conditioning that mind, and you’re not going to rebuild it overnight, so just accept it and deal with it.’ He removed the idea that I was looking for this spiritual path to inner peace. This was much more about me being in control of my own mind; me deciding how I wanted to react to certain situations.

When I got to Sheffield in 2012 I didn’t think there was any chance of winning. I didn’t actually think I had any chance of winning the World Championship again. It has never been my kind of tournament because it goes on for ever, and it’s over longer frames, and there’s so often been a session where I’ve felt I’ve lost the match through getting the hump with myself. So I always thought to win the World Championship once was great, twice was unbelievable, three times even more
so. But even though it’s never been my thing, it’s always the tournament your career is going to be judged by. It’s the hardest one to win, and the most prestigious. It’s the opposite of the Premier League, where you pitch up on a Thursday night, play your match, go home, happy days. Sheffield is tough. Epic. The tournament doesn’t really begin till the semi-finals. A lot of people watch the earlier rounds and by the time it’s the semis they think it’s the end of the tournament, but it’s not. Although you’ve already played 60-odd frames and had 10 or 11 days of intense pressure, it’s only the beginning.

By the quarter-finals you can sense who’s going to be there till the end. You’ll have a quarter-final line-up and some of the players look dishevelled; they look as if they want out. And you spot it instinctively. You think, he didn’t look like that six days ago; he looked fresh, but now the pressure is building up and you can see that certain players will only go so far. They might win another match, but they’re not going to go all the way. Winning the World Championship is not just about talent, it’s about resolve. That’s why both Graham Dott and Peter Ebdon have won it – both of them really know how to dig in.

Although I didn’t think I’d win it again, in the end it was probably my easiest victory. Ten-one in the first round, 13-5 in the second, 13-9 in the quarters, 17-10 in the semis, 18-11 in the final against Ali Carter. It didn’t feel comfortable at the time, though. Often I went in thinking, I can’t go through with it. It was scary, I didn’t want to go out there and play. I didn’t want to fail on the big stage and make myself look silly. But the great thing is that even though I had those thoughts, thanks to Dr Steve they were in the back of my mind, not the front.

For so long I was known as the greatest player never to have won the World Championship. It took me so long to win it
that I thought I never would. I was 25 years old and had been playing professionally for eight years by the time I beat John Higgins 18-14 in the 2001 final. I got knocked out in the quarters and semis nearly every year. Even though I’m now a multiple winner of the world title I keep thinking back to the days when I just fell short. Peter Ebdon, John Parrott, Stephen Hendry, Darren Morgan, David Grey, they all beat me. I’d be playing well up to a point then my game just went. I’d collapse at crunch time. You have nine to ten good days at Sheffield, then one bad session and it’s over. It’s the equivalent of the Iron Man; it goes on longer than the Olympics, 17 days for one event. That’s three weeks of intense pressure.

Last year there were spells in every match when I just couldn’t play any better. I was seeing the ball so clearly. My potting, my safety, everything was on. I broke with my left hand, and that was massively important. My break had always held me back till then. I’d always leave something on, they’d pot it, boom! Frame over. But last year I got it more consistent than ever with my left hand. My left hand gives me a better throw, a better spin, a better pace, a better contact on the ball, the white finds the danger zone with more regularity, and I don’t always leave the shot to nothing.

There’s a science to breaking, and with my left hand I can get through the ball much more effortlessly. I’ve got more room, more time, and I’m able to hold the shot off like a golfer, or when you kick a ball you keep your foot on the ball longer and you have more control over it. You’re with the ball that bit longer, and that’s how I feel with left-handed breaks. Right-handed is more hit-and-miss. Left-handed is more controlled and I can penetrate through the ball and not cut across it. With right-hand, sometimes I get a bit of sidespin on it, and it loses its momentum, comes up short or throws off line and you lose
the pace. If you hit the ball solidly, nine times out of ten the reds stay solid. And if you get a good white you’re in business. So for the break-off the left-handed shot was key for me at last year’s World Championship.

I was worried about becoming over-reliant on my left hand. I felt so good with it, but I didn’t want to end up playing left-handed shots when I didn’t need to. For a while I was getting confused. I felt more relaxed with my left hand, but I’m a better player with the right. Did I want to feel like shit and win or feel good and lose? Sometimes I just wanted to feel good, even if it meant losing.

The funny thing is when I started playing with my left hand other players thought I was taking the piss. They don’t now, but back then they got the right hump. Now a lot of players use their ‘other’ hand – about seven or eight of them on the tour and two or three could build a decent break with their wrong ’un. I was the first ‘ambidextrous’ player, but I wasn’t trying to be clever; it just made sense to play certain shots with my other hand.

Last year, there were times I was hitting the ball so well that all the shackles came off and the demons disappeared. I’d been waiting 20 years to feel like this, and when it finally came it felt bloody good. It had all come together – I was potting at will, playing safety shots like you couldn’t believe, getting out of trouble and not leaving them with chances, scoring nineties and hundreds. You can hear it when you’re playing well. The balls make a lovely sound when you hit the back of the pocket – you’re hitting them with authority. I felt like a champion; I felt like I was playing a different game – a game that nobody could go with. Then, when my game wasn’t so good, they couldn’t put me away either. They could win a session 5-3 or draw it 4-4 – that was the worst that happened to me – but the sessions
when I was in the groove it was 7-1 or 8-0, and by then I’d done the damage.

It felt like when I was 16, and I went on an amazing run, winning 74 out of 76 matches and then winning my first 38 ranking matches as a professional. I always think back to that period when I was 14, 15, 16, and everything felt good. People think I’m bullshitting when I talk about that time; as if I’ve got an Elton John-sized pair of rose-tinted shades on. But anyone who played me at that time would know what I was talking about. Ask someone like Mark Williams, and he’ll remember.

For all my success, I knew I hadn’t been as good as I was when I was a kid, and someone like Mark would back that up because he was there to see those days. Mark knows that how I played last year at the World Championship was the norm when I was a kid. That’s why I was so frustrated all those years because I was used to playing to that standard before I really made it. And for various reasons – loss of technique, loss of balance, loss of confidence, poor posture, whatever – I forgot how to play.

I know that sounds daft when I’d already won the World Championship three times and had won 23 majors, but it really is how I felt. That I wasn’t producing the goods. Then last year it finally came together, and, boy, did it feel good. The supporters were definitely glad to see me back winning, but I’m not so sure the players would have been. Why would they be? If I was playing me, I wouldn’t have thought, isn’t it great to see Ronnie come good again. I would never have said: ‘It’s great that Stephen Hendry has come back, and is flying again.’ Of course I wouldn’t be happy about it. It’s like asking a turkey to vote for Christmas.

The experts and former players were pleased for me. Dennis Taylor has always supported me. I love Dennis. John Virgo was
genuine, and Steve Davis was chuffed. Even Stephen Hendry, since he stopped playing, has taken an interest in my game. He kept sending me little texts, saying: ‘Come on, mate! Get back on that table.’ Amazing. My hero asking me to get back to playing. It’s lovely to know that all those people you looked up to when you were younger, idolised in the case of Hendry and Davis, want you to do well.

There was a point in the final frame. I had made 50 or 60 and I was on 20-odd, and as soon as I potted that ball I started thinking about little Ronnie. He was up in the box, and it just felt that it was only me and him in the venue. Lily wasn’t there – she’s not much of a snooker fan. And to be honest I didn’t expect little Ronnie to be there either. I asked Jo, and she said, how is he going to get there. I said to Jo, I know you’ve got worries about little Ronnie coming down, but Damien Hirst’s personal driver, Ross, will come down, put a film on for him, and he’ll only talk to Ronnie if Ronnie talks to him. I said he’ll be treated like a king for the day, so he’ll be in safe hands. Jo gave the go-ahead, which was great, and he came down.

About twelve noon on the second day, Sylvia, Damien’s PA, brought little Ronnie up to my room. We had a cuddle, which really set me up for the afternoon. I was so happy to see him and be able to share this day with him, and for him to see me on the biggest stage performing. My dream had always been for the kids to come and watch me play and share in the wins and losses. And I hadn’t had that apart from when Lily danced on the table when I won the UK in 2008.

It calmed me down seeing little Ronnie because I was feeling the pressure. On the Sunday morning, the first day of the final, I’d been really sick – whether it was down to a meal or down to pressure I don’t know, but I was spewing up and my face was coming out in blotches. I didn’t eat all that day, and I
burped my way through the afternoon session. But I managed to get through it, and I was much better the second day. I was winning 10-6. How I came out on top that day I don’t know because I felt terrible and hadn’t eaten all day.

As I was clearing up in the final I had a lump in my throat. I wanted to cry and I thought: ‘No, you can’t. You can’t.’ I held it back. That’s all I was focusing on – holding back the tears. I knew it couldn’t get any better for me. After all that had happened in the last two years with the kids and the custody battle, and when I was ready to quit and losing first rounds every tournament, I’d come from that to winning the World Championship. And to have little Ronnie there was the icing on the proverbial. To go from barely seeing the kids to having my little boy who thinks the world of me and who I love to pieces being there, sharing that moment with me, was just perfect. It couldn’t get any better. He was only four, and I’m sure he didn’t have a clue what it all meant to me.