Winning your first professional title is a moment that snooker players will remember for the rest of their lives. Of course, many players have never experienced that feeling of relief and joy, let alone the one who stood in the center of the field and lifted the trophy after the final.
The closer a player gets to his first title, the more stressful it becomes, and we've heard many times that "if he wins one title, he'll keep winning more titles". In any sport, there are players with huge talent, but they have never made such a breakthrough.
Chris Henry has been involved in snooker for many years as a coach and has helped many top players. In fact, this year's World Championship finalists Mark Selby and Sean Murphy have both been mentored by him.
Henry's teaching methods are based on neuroscience, and repetition and habituation help the brain normalize potentially difficult situations. He believes that the most intense competition scenarios can be simulated under practice conditions, which may be the key to success.
Henry explains: "A lot of things are present in our subconscious. There is something in the brain called PCM, which is the mechanism of mental control. It works like a thermostat. If you imagine you're in a room and you want to make it warmer, you turn the thermostat to 22 degrees and the heating turns on. However, once you reach 22 degrees, the thermostat recognizes this and cuts off the heating. There is a set level of self-expression and achievement in our subconscious, and if we are about to surpass our subconscious self-setting, it will be difficult to surpass this level. ”
"For example, if someone is about to achieve their first hundred, they start to get very nervous. That's because his brain doesn't approve of this level of performance. That's when a part of the brain called the amygdala kicks in. Its job is to protect a person from potential dangers or things it does not recognize. ”
"What we're going to do is create memory inertia to get around that." We can do this while practicing because the subconscious mind doesn't know what's real and what's not. I worked with Peter Alberton when he beat Stephen Hendry in the final of the 2002 World Championships. We often trained in his mother-in-law's garage to win world championships through visualization and role-playing. Since he had previously lost to Stephen at Crucible, he often imagined that the person he had beaten in the final was him (Hendry). Incredibly, we took a look at the draw and found him (Hendry) just in the other half. Even more incredibly, Stephen reached the final and Peter managed to achieve all his goals. ”
When Mark King won his first title at the 2016 Northern Ireland Open, Henry was also working with him. Mark King hadn't won a single title in his previous 25-year career before he made his dream come true by beating Barry Hawkins 9-8 in that rather dramatic final.
Mark King said: "There was a lot of preparation before I won in Belfast and for a long time my family was there. For me, that's all there is to it, and it's the end. Everyone is fantastically there. That's what you're trying to do. I see people like Mark Selby and John Higgins sitting at the table with their families after lifting the trophy, and I want to share that joy with my family. I was the best of the week. I won the championship and got the trophy and all the wonderful feelings. No disappointment, I don't need to talk about it anymore. That's great. ”
"I'm still racing because I want to win again. I don't want to just earn bonuses. There are a lot of people who think I'll never win a championship again. They'll think it's just one of my lucky ones, and I'm not going to win again. I want them to shut up and take another championship to prove that I'm not short-lived. ”
Anthony Hamilton has a similar experience to Mark King, who has been chasing his first professional title for 26 years. In the ranking of the best players who have never won a ranking championship, his name is always mentioned first. But that changed after the 2017 German Masters, when he beat Ali Carter 9-6 in the final.
In fact, in 2016, Hamilton almost reached the final of the Northern Ireland Open. He regrettably missed the ball in the semi-final decider, giving up the final opportunity to rival Barry Hawkins.
Hamilton reflected: "Ten years before the German Masters won, I had actually accepted the terrible fact that I would not win the title. I didn't even think about it after that. I've had a low back injury since I was 35 and I realized I couldn't win a championship and I stopped caring about it. ”
"The semi-final with Barry in Belfast was the first time in ten years that I didn't feel completely useless. I'm no longer like I am now, just an old guy who pretends to be in front of other players. In that moment, everything changed and I became a qualified snooker again. I controlled myself. Yes, although the loss of control of the mother ball made me lose to Barry, I felt that at that time I could play snooker for another 24 hours in a row. It was an amazing feeling. It was a good feeling, and it was a brain-to-brain performance in Berlin. ”
"At that time, my parents were also in the audience, and being able to win the championship in front of the eyes of my loved ones was definitely a fairytale ending, which was a moment worth remembering for a lifetime." If I saw this tearful winning scene in a sports movie, I would think it was too cheesy. But I was really in shape and carried on to the end of the game. Once you have confidence and acumen, the performance that a snooker player can do is amazing. ”
David Gilbert is another player who will top the "Best Player Who Never Won a Ranking Tournament" list. Gilbert's string of bad tournament experiences has made him extremely sad, he lost 16:17 to John Higgins in the semi-finals of the 2019 World Championships, and was turned over by Mark Williams in the 2018 World Open final with a 9:5 lead.
So when Gilbert won the landmark victory over Mark Allen in the Champions League (ranking) earlier this season, he was very emotional.
Gilbert recalled: "I just ended up smiling, I think, which is quite rare when it comes to hitting snooker. It was a good feeling that I could finally go back to the club and no longer have to listen to the locals who had been beating me for years for not winning the title. They really couldn't say anything more, it was written there in black and white, and I was the champion. ”
"Whether I win the Champions League, the single time limit or the British Championship, it doesn't matter. A champion is a champion. I'm not going to get carried away and start getting complacent. I want to take another championship now, whether that's going to happen or not, I don't know. I will continue to work hard and keep trying to improve. ”
Elliot Slather still hasn't achieved his dream of a first title, but he reached the semi-finals at the British Open at the start of the season, with good results, after reaching the final four at the 2017 Northern Ireland Open. He thinks that if you look far ahead, the first crown is not so unattainable.
Slasser said: "If you want to win multiple tournament titles, then it (the first title) should really not matter. This pressure will always be there. If you look at champions-like players like Mark Williams and Ronnie O'Sullivan, it doesn't matter if they win one or ten. They have an incomparable desire for success and always want more. ”
"They're the best group of players ever, but what underpins them is ambition, being always wanting more dissatisfaction. For this reason, you must maintain your own high standards for a long time. But if you miss it, then you're missing it. I think a lot of people set their goals too short, they're just content to win a match or get to the final. If you're not aiming for the championship, then I don't understand why you're playing. ”