Alex Higgins. R I P.

[Bill]

Another flawed genius, and another link to my generation has died too young. I first saw him "live" when he won the first of his world titles, which was held in Manchester in those days.

Putting aside his fragility and self destructive nature, he made a distinct impression on me. The staid and stuffy snooker establishment was changed forever when the twitching, hard drinking and hard shooting young Irishman exploded on the scene.

 

The old school sometimes took an extremely long time between shots to check angles, chalk their cue, brush a particle of dust off the table, clean the cue ball and object ball - and then repeat the process, this made for excruciatingly long matches and a showmanship style that was boring and painfully slow.

 

Enter Alex 'The Hurricane' Higgins, beer drinking, nervous twitching, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the middle finger of his 'bridge' hand beating the baize, in a bizarre 'tattoo', running around the table between shots, taking a millisecond to gauge the intended shot and then down to strike the cue ball with apparent venom, the balls slamming into the pocket whilst the cue ball would come off of seven cushions, neatly avoiding other static balls to conveniently sit behind the next object ball.

 

Alex you made your mark you were a pleasure to watch, and when you were good you were very very good, but when you were bad you couldn't stop yourself.

 

RIP Alex, hopefully at peace now...

[rubecula]

Well said Bill.

 

You could love him, you could hate him, but you could never ignore him. Without the likes of him, many folks would not have an interest in Snooker today.

 

Before Alex, snooker was going down the drain as an 'old' man's game. Snooker halls were fast vanishing.

 

After Alex things began to improve.

 

He will be missed by many folks, not just fans of the game.

 

A sad end, but now he is at peace.

 

RIP Alex The Hurricane.