Snooker legend Stephen Hendry says certain players were able to get under his skin in his pomp, with Peter Ebdon the prime example.
The seven-time world champion dominated the sport in the 1990s, becoming a household name for his brilliance on the baize.
He wasn’t unbeatable, though, and a young Ebdon got the better of the Scot in a number of their early meetings.
Notable wins for Ebdon came in the 1995 Masters and the final of the Irish Masters in the same year, with Hendry admitting that the flash newcomer was getting on his nerves.
‘If someone does annoy you a little bit…I’ve had players like that in the past,’ Hendry said on the Snooker Club podcast. ‘Ebdon came on the scene and he beat me three or four times out of the first seven or eight times we played and that was starting to annoy me a little bit.
‘I didn’t like the way he played, obviously we had nothing in common, we didn’t gel as people off the table. He came on the scene and was a huge, larger than life character with the ponytail and the flash waistcoats, he was telling everyone what he was going to do.
‘He got under a lot of people’s skin. Snooker players are pretty reserved, they don’t really like someone coming on and shouting from the rooftops.
‘Look at tennis, they give it a fist after every point they win, but if you did that in snooker other players would say, what is this guy doing? Ebdon was a bit in that vein.
‘But it was good for the game. We had a mini rivalry, we seemed to play a lot for a few years, had a little rivalry. He beat me two or three times. That annoyed me.’
Hendry was musing on players that annoyed him as he talked up the rivalry between Judd Trump and Kyren Wilson after their final of the Northern Ireland Open last weekend.
Wilson won that match, as he did their other final this season at the Xi’an Grand Prix, and while Hendry does not think there is an issure between the players, he does think Trump will start to get annoyed if he keeps losing to the world champion.
‘I’m not saying there’s still needle between Judd and Kyren, but I don’t think they socialise a lot,’ said Hendry. ‘Judd doesn’t socialise with a lot of people anyway off the table.
‘Sometime there are just players that annoy you a little bit, get under your skin, and I’m just starting to wonder if Kyren’s getting under Judd’s skin a little bit.
‘It’s fascinating to see if this continues. I fully expect Judd to keep winning. Will Kyren too? I have to admit that at the start of the season I wouldn’t have expected him to win two tournaments, and he’s done it already. I’m really impressed by the way he is embracing and enjoying being world champion. He looks like he’s loving it and having fun as well.’
Trump, the world number one, and Wilson, the world champion are back in action at the International Championship in Nanjing, China starting on Sunday.
The Warrior plays Mitchell Mann on Sunday before the Ace meets Sanderson Lam on Monday.