As he looks ahead with renewed confidence and more importantly inner peace and equilibrium to 2023, Mark Selby is reconciling the man he is today with the one who began 2022 engaged in a full-scale battle with his demons.
It was just 12 months ago that four-time world champion Selby, a player renowned and admired for his tenacity and fighting qualities on the table, finally revealed in public the full extent and depth of the mental health issues that were threatening his ability to compete and even cope with life.
World number two Selby, 39, is already one of the sport’s all-time greats, and that success has deservedly brought him fame and fortune. But the journey has been little short of extraordinary since Selby has made something very substantial of himself despite an upbringing which was as tough as they come.
His mother left the family home when he was young, and his beloved father David tragically died with Selby just 16 and about to embark on a professional snooker career. His dad never saw him play a tour match, let alone witness any of the trophies lifted aloft.
And when Selby went public about his depression during the Masters last season, going on to take time away from the game and seek professional help, his doctor soon identified the premature loss of his father as still being a huge factor.
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Selby received huge and widespread praise from mental health charities for his honest and transparent admissions, and while the work continues on an outlook that at its very lowest point included suicidal thoughts, there was a return to the winner’s enclosure at December’s English Open that seemed a million miles away for most of 2022. And, looking ahead, Selby can once again seriously contemplate adding further to his haul of 21 ranking titles and three Masters crowns.
He explains: “It has been a tough 12 months for me, no question – but at the same time I am really proud that I went and sought help for the mental health problems that I had. I had been going through it for a long time previously, maybe a few years, and though I had tried medication I had never really got proper help. I just thought I could take the meds and it would all go away. But I had just reached a point where it all got on top of me and I need to speak to somebody.
“So there is a real pride there in myself for speaking out and going and doing something about it. I feel like it was the best thing I ever did, and I wish I had done it sooner. So off the table I am in far better place. I am not out of the woods yet, because you can fall back into it. I read something with Tyson Fury a while back and he was saying the reason he came out of retirement was because he felt himself slipping back into his old ways how he was. And he needed that to get some extra motivation and give himself something to do.
“And as a result of the work off the table, I am enjoying it again on the table. It is the bravest and hardest thing I have ever done, confronting these issues, speaking out and getting help, harder than any match I have ever played, and any title I have ever won – by a long stretch. For such a long time I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t feel like I was going through mental depression, I just thought I was having down days, and everyone has up and down days.
“But then when I started listening to people that who had gone through it, be that Tyson Fury or others, I just related to everything they were saying. It was how I felt.
“[My wife] Vikki had been saying to me for ages ‘Be brave and speak out’, but it never felt the right time to do it. And it didn’t even when I did it, which is probably why I did it on social media. I have been amazed by the supportive nature of the response, that’s for sure. More so among the general public, people just coming up, and saying 'Well done, good luck, it was brave what you did.'
“They have said things like ‘I have been suffering myself for years – but seeing a top sportsman saying what I am feeling makes a real difference and helps a lot.' We are all only human, and I just hope that if there are people out there feeling the same, speak out and go and get some help rather than bottling it all up. I did that for years, and it did me no good at all.
“Winning a title wasn’t a priority at all in 2022, although one came along late in December. It was all about getting myself right, and that has gone well. And having been as low as I was, I don’t want to go back to that place if at all possible and my outlook on the table is going to be more about enjoying it.
“I want to be competing for the biggest titles again. I have started putting the work and the hours in again when previously I wasn’t. You can’t cheat the game.
“I got the reward at the English Open and hopefully there will be more to come in 2023. It was emotional, as you saw from me and Vikki on the night. It has probably been harder for her than me in many ways. She hasn’t always known the right thing to say, and was worried whether she was helping or making it worse. That is something the psychiatrist made a real point of – telling me that whatever I was feeling, those closest to me would be feeling the effects as bad or worse.
“And she has been a rock, I genuinely think but for her I might not be sat here now. I owe her everything. And they’re always right, the other half aren’t they? I should have listened to her first time.”
*18+ | BeGambleAware | Odds Subject to Change
