Monique wrote:Me too and it did not help me to sympathise with him I'm afraid. There is no doubt about his influence on the game success, it was massive. There is no doubt he was an exciting player and a great crowd puller. But as a human being he was pretty poor and he never learned. He's exhausted the efforts of many who tried to help him.
I agree with you. He even admitted to beating his wife at one point in his book. He we honest enough to say in the book it was unforgivable. It was. I am too young to have watched Alex Higgins in his prime. I am old enough to perhaps watch him towards the end of his career, but I'd only have been about 10, and wasn't much interested in sport at the time. So I don't remember Alex much at the time, nor do I remember his controversy. To me is an iconic figure, who I have on a T-Shirt, but not one who I remember in the same way I did Paul Hunter when he died.
Saying that, I'm under no illusion as to how much he influenced the sport. More so then any other player. There were shots that he invented. Literally invented, people didn't even know you could play those shots/pots. His bad boy antics wouldn't have been my cup of tea, nor would I probably be a fan if he played today. But he brought in fans in droves. It is inescapable the impact he made on the sport, probably more so then anybody else. People play his style now more often then not. The style Higgins played was popularised by players more successful then him, but invented by him. Youngsters may have grown up watching Hendry be successful with that style, but without Higgins there may well have been no Hendry. In turn Ronnie might not have realised his natural gifts, if it wasn't realised you could play in the way the Hurricane did.
I am not a fan one jot of his personality. Not one bit. But I am too young to remember a lot of his bad times, and emotional collapses, so I feel I can appreciate what he did for the sport, and how it certainly wouldn't exist in the form it did today, if at all, if it wasn't for Alex. That's my tribute, and why I mourned. His personality was certainly questionable, and remains so. His impact on the game is not.