With the snooker UK Championships currently on going, we thought we would today take a look at one of the legend of the game...
Alex Higgins.
Alexander Gordon "Alex" Higgins was a Northern Irish professional snooker player, who is remembered as one of the most iconic figures in the game. Nicknamed Hurricane Higgins because of his fast play, and is often credited with having brought the game of snooker to a wider audience, contributing to its peak in popularity in the 1980s. He had a reputation as an unpredictable and difficult character. He was a heavy smoker, struggled with drinking and gambling, First diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998, Higgins died of the illness in his Belfast home on 24 July 2010.
Life and career
Early life
Alex Higgins was born in Belfast and had three sisters.
often in the Jampot club in his native Sandy Row area of south Belfast and
later in the YMCA in the nearby city centre. At age 14 and weighing seven and a
half stone, he left for England and a career as a jockey. Higgins was then the
youngest ever winner of the title, a record retained until Stephen Hendry's
1990 victory at the age of 21. In April 1976, Higgins reached the final again
and faced Ray Reardon. Higgins led 11–9, but Reardon made four centuries and
seven breaks over 60 to pull away and win the title for the fifth time with the
score of 27–16. Higgins was also the runner-up to Cliff Thorburn in 1980,
losing 18–16, after being 9–5 up. Higgins won the world title for a second time
in 1982 after beating Reardon 18–15 ; it was an emotional as well as
professional victory for him. Higgins would have been ranked No. 1 in the world
rankings for the 1982/83 season had he not forfeited ranking points following
disciplinary action.
Other victories
Throughout his career, Higgins won 20 other titles, one of
the most notable being the 1983 UK Championship. In the final he trailed Steve
Davis 0–7 before producing a famous comeback to win 16–15. He also won the
Masters twice, in 1978 and in 1981, beating Cliff Thorburn and Terry Griffiths
in the finals respectively. Another notable victory was his final professional
triumph in the 1989 Irish Masters at the age of 40 when he defeated a young
Stephen Hendry.
Post-retirement.
After his retirement from the professional game, Higgins
spent time playing for small sums of money in and around Northern Ireland. He
made appearances in the 2005 and 2006 Irish Professional Championship, these
comebacks ending in first-round defeats by Garry Hardiman and Joe Delaney respectively.
On 12 June 2007, it was reported that Higgins had assaulted
a referee at a charity match in the north-east of England. Higgins returned to
competitive action in September 2007 at the Irish Professional Championship in
Dublin but was whitewashed 0–5 by former British Open champion Fergal O'Brien
in the first round at the Spawell Club, Templelogue.
Higgins continued to play fairly regularly, and enjoyed
"hustling" all comers for small-time stakes in clubs in Northern
Ireland and beyond; in May 2009 he entered the Northern Ireland Amateur
Championship, "to give it a crack", but failed to appear for his
match.
On 8 April 2010, Higgins was part of the debut Snooker
Legends Tour event in Sheffield, at the Crucible, checking himself out of
hospital two days before the event, after having been admitted with pneumonia
and breathing problems. He appeared alongside other retired or
close-to-retiring professionals, including John Parrott, Jimmy White, John
Virgo and Cliff Thorburn.
It is estimated that Higgins earned and spent £3–4 million
in his career as a snooker player.
Higgins drank alcohol and smoked during tournaments, as did
many of his contemporaries. A volatile personality got him into frequent fights
and arguments, both on and off the snooker table. One of the most serious of
these clashes was when he head-butted a referee at the UK championship in 1986.
This led to his being fined £12,000 and banned from five tournaments. He was
convicted of assault and criminal damage, and fined £250 by a court.
Outside snooker
At the time of his 1972 triumph at the World Championship,
Higgins had no permanent home and by his own account had recently lived in a
row of abandoned houses in Blackburn which were awaiting demolition. In one
week he had moved into five different houses on the same street, moving down
one every time his current dwelling was demolished.
In 1975, Higgins' son Chris Delahunty was born. Cara Hasler
in April 1975 in Sydney. They had a daughter Christel and divorced. His second
marriage was to Lynn Avison in 1980 at a United Reformed Church. They had a
daughter Lauren and son Jordan . They
split in 1985 and divorced. In the same year, Higgins began a relationship with
Siobhan Kidd, which ended in 1989 after he allegedly hit her with a hairdryer.
He had a long and enduring friendship with Oliver Reed and
was a good friend of John Sykes, with whom he often played exhibition matches.
While not normally noted for his philanthropy, in 1983
Higgins helped a young boy from the Manchester area, a fan of his who had been
in a coma for two months. His parents were growing desperate and wrote to
Higgins. He recorded his voice on a tape and sent it to the boy with his best
wishes. He later visited the boy in hospital, unannounced, and promised that if
the boy recovered they would play snooker together. True to his word, once the
boy was out, the match was held.
In 1996, Higgins was convicted of assaulting a 14-year-old
boy, while in 1997 then-girlfriend Holly Haise stabbed him three times during a
domestic argument. Higgins appeared in the Sporting Stars edition of the
British television quiz The Weakest Link on 25 July 2009.
Illness and death
For many years, Higgins smoked 60 cigarettes a day.
By 2009, Higgins lived alone in a caravan. He was too ill to
have the implants fitted. Despite his illness he continued to smoke cigarettes
and drink heavily until the end of his life.
At the end of his life, Higgins' weight fell to. He was
found dead in bed in his flat on 24 July 2010. The cause of death was a combination
of malnutrition, pneumonia, a bronchial condition and throat cancer. His
children survive him.
Higgins' funeral service was held in Belfast on 2 August
2010. He was cremated, and his ashes were interred in Carnmoney Cemetery in
Newtownabbey, County Antrim.
Legacy
Alex Higgins was an inspiration to many subsequent
professional snooker players, including Ken Doherty, Jimmy White and Ronnie
O'Sullivan, who in an interview stated "Alex was an inspiration to players
like Jimmy White and thousands of snooker players all over the country,
including me. The way he played at his best is the way I believe the game
should be played. It was on the edge, keeping the crowd entertained and glued
to the action."
In Clive Everton's TV documentary The Story of Snooker,
Steve Davis described Higgins as the "one true genius that snooker has
produced", despite the autobiography of a contemporary leading
professional Willie Thorne characterising Higgins as "not a great
player". Higgins arguably fulfilled his potential only intermittently
during his career peak in the 1970s and '80s; Everton puts this down to Davis
and Ray Reardon generally being too consistent for him.
Regardless, Higgins' exciting style and explosive persona
helped make snooker a growing television sport in the 1970s and 1980s. Higgins
also made the first 16-red clearance ; it was a break of 146.
Tournament wins
Ranking wins:
World Championship – 1982
Non-ranking wins:
World Championship – 1972
Irish Professional Championship – 1972, 1978, 1978, 1979,
1983, 1989
Men of the Midlands – 1972, 1973
Watney Open – 1974
Benson & Hedges Ireland Tournament – 1977
The Masters – 1978, 1981
Tolly Cobbold Classic – 1979, 1980
British Gold Cup – 1980
Padmore Super Crystalate International – 1980
UK Championship – 1983
Irish Masters – 1989
Pontins Camber Sands – 1980
Team wins
World Doubles Championship – 1984
World Cup – 1985, 1986, 1987 with All Ireland team.
Pro-Am wins
Pontin's Spring Open
Amateur wins
All Ireland Amateur Championship – 1968
Northern Ireland Amateur Championship – 1968
Tipster Street.
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