Stephen Hendry, the seven-times world champion, has confirmed he will return for the 2011/2012 snooker season, having given serious consideration to ending his illustrious 26-year professional career.
But because Ding Junhui beat Stuart Bingham in the last-16 stage of this year’s world championship, Hendry, who was beaten 13-4 by Mark Selby in Sheffield, clung on to his elite top-16 status by the skin of his teeth.
That means the Scot will not have to qualify for the first few major tournaments of next season.
If Hendry had dropped out of the top 16 for the first time in his career it looked unlikely that he would have featured at a major tournament again.
He would have been forced to go the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield to win a qualifying match just to assure his participation in tournaments, something he stressed he did not want to do.
He could hardly have been blamed. Having won more titles than any other player in the professional game, playing in empty auditoriums is an unedifying prospect.
However, his denouement may come soon enough. Hendry knows that unless he starts the season with tangible results then – with the current ranking system updated at regular intervals – he could drop out of the world’s elite in the early months of the 2011-2012 campaign.
For now, though, he will trudge on, despite revealing a growing disenchantment with the practice demands the sport places on him.
“I’m going to play on, staying in the [top] 16 was a big decision,” he said. “I’m going to keep playing, I still love playing. If I’m going to play I’m going to have to give it 100%, which means I’m going to have to play in all of the tournaments that I don’t like.
“There’s no point doing it half-hearted. I thought I was going to give it up, but I want to carry on.”
“I haven’t been practising like I used to, up to seven hours a day. It’s obviously different when you have got a family and other things in your life. Snooker can get boring after a while, you’re playing the same shots over and over again in practice. I also have got a bit lazy and have been practising at home on my own. I need to get more competitive practice with other players. We’re lucky in Scotland, we’ve got some not bad players with the likes of John Higgins, Graeme Dott, Stephen Maguire and others. I’ll be knocking on their doors.
“It’s about finding a happy medium with the practice and the many new Players Tour Championship tournaments.
“I might still have played had I finished outside the 16, after talking to [wife] Mandy at home I haven’t given up hope of getting my belief back. Now I’ve made the decision I am quite excited. I must go down to the events with a different mindset to last year, where I was looking not to enjoy them. I left school six months early with no qualifications. Since I was 12 or 13, snooker is all I’ve done.”
Hendry last won a major ranking tournament in 2005, with his success at the Malta Cup, and has not claimed any of the biggest prizes in the game – the World Championship, Masters or UK Championship – since his Crucible triumph in 1999.
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