Snooker legend Stephen Hendry admits there was both sadness and relief when Ronnie O’Sullivan finally equalled his record of seven world titles last year.
The Scot was for years hailed as the greatest of all time, but the Rocket has made his own strong claim for that tag by matching Hendry’s Crucible achievements along with his stronger overall CV.
The true competitor in Hendry, 54, wanted to see his World Championship mark survive intact, but there is no bigger admirer of O’Sullivan who he now expects to get to eight.
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And the winner of 36 ranking titles in a far more compressed timespan than O’Sullivan also revealed the depths of his desire to target and chase down all of Steve Davis’s records.
Hendry, speaking to the World Snooker Tour podcast, said: “I’m not going to lie – I didn’t want Ronnie to equal my record of seven, and I don’t want him to beat my record.
“I don’t want him to win eight – why would I? But if he does then fair play, because he has taken the game to another level and is an absolutely wonderful snooker player.
“And once it happened, it was also almost kind of a relief. I can’t explain it, but it kind of took the pressure off me. It was a strange feeling I had.
“Maybe not that night, because there was still a wee bit of sadness he had equaled my record. But a week or so later I was like ‘He’s got the mantle to live up to now’.
“I don’t know if I ever believed anyone would beat that record of seven world titles. The last one happened in 1999 and that time Mark Williams, Ronnie and John Higgins hadn’t got anywhere near that.
“So I suppose I thought ‘That is going to take some effort’ for one of those to win eight – because I couldn’t see anyone else doing it. Steve Davis wasn’t going to win another one.
“But then you think that records in sport do get beaten. When Ronnie had the career change with the association with Steve Peters, I started to think this could get beaten now.
“He started to become a much better competitor and winning more regularly so when he got to four or five I thought it could go.
“Steve Davis…I wouldn’t say it was an obsession, but it was all about beating Steve’s records for me. And Ronnie O’Sullivan had the same thing with me, with the seven to beat – which I’m sure he will.
“And I think it helps your career that you have always got this target to go for.
“But I wanted to beat everything Steve did basically, that was the target. Most Masters, most UKs, most worlds – those were the ones I was really interested in.
“Unfortunately I didn’t manage to beat his UKs record. Maybe if Steve had won seven [world titles] and I had to get eight, I would have kept up the intensity.
“Unconsciously I switched off a bit after the seventh. I took my foot off the gas in terms of the intensity of my preparation.
“It was always in the distance to win seven throughout the 1990s. But if you have that target and you reach it, it’s like ‘okay, what’s the next target’ and there wasn’t one.
“When I got serious it was Steve I had to follow, he was the best player and the one that won titles. And I thought if I wanted to achieve anything, I had to do things the way he did it.”
Hendry was testy though on the subject of his return to the snooker pro tour after eight years retired in 2020 when accepting a wildcard – raising the possibility he may soon call time on the venture.
There have been just three wins since September 2020 from only 11 event appearances.
But despite saying the chance of Crucible return was the motivation for "coming back", he claimed: “It’s not a comeback – it never was a comeback. Some people keep insisting, and the haters on Twitter and they know who they are, keep saying when I withdraw…
“There are good reasons, I was working on TV. My TV commitments are more important now than playing snooker.
“I have a wildcard to play in events that I want to play in, and that’s what I am doing. My ambition for it, coming back, was to hopefully play a match at the Crucible again. That’s what it was all about.
“But even to play two hours a week five days a week which I probably would need to is a struggle.
“Listen, I go to tournaments now and invariably get beat 5-0 or 5-1 because I haven’t prepared, and you can’t expect to do anything. But it’s not a comeback – that word really annoys me.”
*18+ | BeGambleAware
