Stephen Hendry names snooker’s biggest underachievers: ‘He had everything’

Stephen Hendry has picked out four players he considers snooker’s biggest underachievers, including one of his former practice partners.

In terms of achievement, Hendry is in a small group of the greatest players ever to pick up a cue, with seven World Championship titles to his name.

Ronnie O’Sullivan has overtaken the Scot to become the greatest player of all time in the eyes of most fans and pundits, but Hendry is not far behind the Rocket in any GOAT list.

The 57-year-old knows more than most about getting to the top of snooker and he has seen some players over the years who he expected to make it and either got nowhere near or haven’t quite managed it.

Hendry told WST’s Snooker Club podcast: ‘If I had a pound for every player when you travel up and down the country and someone says, “wait till you see him, he makes seven, eight, nine centuries a day in practice, he’s going to be a top player,” and you never see them!

‘Also players who are top amateurs and you think they’re going to have a great professional career and they don’t. The professional game is completely different from the amateur game, I think.

‘There’s been so many amateurs who haven’t reached their potential. There was a guy when I turned pro, a guy called David Gilbert from Essex [not the current professional of the same name]. Steve Newbury from Wales. They used to clean up in the amateur games and didn’t do a thing as professionals.’

In a different category, Hendry looked at very successful professionals, who haven’t reached the absolute pinnacle of snooker by winning the World Championship.

‘Down the years maybe people like Matthew Stevens has probably underachieved, with his talent. I reckon [Stephen] Maguire has probably underachieved with his talent. You can go up and down the rankings.’

On Maguire, who won the 2004 UK Championship and was tipped to ‘rule the game for the next ten year’ by O’Sullivan, Hendry feels he had everything required to become world champion, but is yet to go beyond a Crucible semi-final.

‘When he first came on the scene and he won that UK Championship – I practiced with him a lot when he was young and I thought he had the right attitude, he’s a winner, hates losing, works hard, practices hard,’ said Hendry.

‘He had everything, I thought, to go on and win the world title, but it hasn’t happened.’

Maguire himself has admitted that he has not won what the amount of titles he feels he should have, suggesting him and Stevens have enjoyed themselves off the table a bit more than other players.

Asked if he’s satisfied with what he’s achieved since that UK Championship win, he told Metro in 2024: ‘No. Ach, no. I’ve not had a good career.

‘Without a doubt I’ve not won what I think maybe I should have won. I don’t care what anybody else says, but I think I’ve left a few tournaments out there and that’s probably my own fault.

‘As me and Matthew Stevens say, we’ve got stories. Not a lot of the boys have got stories, they’ve got titles but they’ve not got stories. Maybe it’s a good thing, I don’t know.

‘Looking back. I think maybe I probably should have knuckled down from 2005, maybe that seven or eight year period. I should have maybe knuckled down a little bit more. Och aye, it’s away now. I’m still here, I’m still breathing.’