Snooker great Ken Doherty has retold how he paid just £2 for a cue which won him six ranking titles, including the World Championship.
Doherty is one of snooker’s all-time legends and has a place in the sport’s hall of fame. He is best remembered for upsetting the odds and beating Stephen Hendry in the 1997 Crucible final.
The Dubliner reached another world final a year later but lost out to John Higgins and fell to a second Crucible final defeat to Mark Williams five years later.
Doherty was also winner of five other ranking titles including the Welsh Open and the Malta Cup. He also won prestigious trophies in his younger days such as the World Junior and Amateur Championships.
And he did it all with a £2 cue which he used non-stop for 44 years, starting from the age of 11. Doherty has retold the remarkable story of his cheap but valuable purchase to the World Snooker Tour.
He said: “I was 11 years old and I didn’t have a cue. I used to go into the snooker club, empty the ash trays, sweep the floor and brush the tables. Then I would get a free game.
“I found a cue on the pool rack and I could tell it wasn’t a house cue. I thought somebody had maybe left it behind.
“I started playing with it, liked it and I asked the manager if I could keep it? In a broad Dublin accent, he said if I gave him a fiver I could keep it.
“All my trophies were with that £2 cue”
“I asked my mother for the money and that I’d pay her back. She gave me the five pounds, I went to the post office and changed it to five single pound notes. I put two in one pocket and three in the other. I said to the manager, I only had two pounds as that was all we could afford.
“He took the two pounds out of my hand and that was the cue I won the World Junior Championship, World Amateur Championship and World Professional Championship with. They were all with that two pound cue.”
But earlier this year Doherty decided to do something he had never done before in his playing career – change his cue. In April he likened it to “finding a new romance”.
The six-times ranking event winner added: “People may say why did you change? I wasn’t playing any good, so I thought a new cue would reinvigorate me. It is worth a try.
“I can play shots with the new cue that I couldn’t do before. But the simple stuff is a little bit harder. You get caught out with shots that you wouldn’t have before.”
Main Image: Ken Doherty – WPBSA
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