'He brought laughter': Honoring snooker's taken talent a score of years on.

Everything Paul Hunter ever wanted to do was practice the game.

A sporting bug, caught at the tender age of three with the help of a tiny snooker set on his parents' coffee table in his Leeds home, would result in a life on the tour that saw him win half a dozen major wins in a six-year span.

Now marks 20 years since the popular Hunter passed away from cancer, just days before to his twenty-eighth birthday.

But notwithstanding the loss of a once-in-a-generation player that transcended the game he loved, his legacy and impact on snooker and those who followed his career remain as vibrant now.

'His passion was clear': The Formative Years

"We could not have predicted in a million years Paul would become a career sportsman," Kristina Hunter says.

"Yet he just loved it."

Hunter's father recalls how his son "cared little for anything else" except for snooker as a child.

"He was relentless," he adds. "He practiced every night after school."

After successfully badgering his dad to take him to a local club to play on regulation tables at the age of eight, the aspiring talent made the jump from table top snooker with great skill.

His mercurial talent would be coached by the former world title holder Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, at a now former establishment in the area of Yeadon.

Quick Success: The Path to Glory

With his parents' pleas to do his homework often being ignored as practice took priority, his parents took the "risk" of taking Hunter out of school at the mid-teens to fully concentrate on forging a career in the game.

It paid off in spades. Within a short period, their young son had won his first ranking title, the Welsh Open of 1998.

Considered one of snooker's toughest events to win because of the presence of elite players only, Hunter won three times, in the early 2000s.

'A Cheeky Charm': The Man Behind the Cue

But for all his achievements in competition, away from the game Hunter's down-to-earth charisma never left him.

"He had a great temperament did Paul," Alan says. "He connected with everybody."

"Upon meeting him you'd like him," Kristina continues. "Paul was fun. He'd make you comfortable."

Hunter's partner Lindsey, with whom he had daughter Evie, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "humorous, caring" and "never the first to depart from the party".

With his natural likability, boyish good looks and candid way with the press, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was christened 'A Sporting Icon'.

Facing Adversity: A Fight Against Cancer

In that year, a year that should have signaled the height of his career, Hunter was told he had cancer and would later undergo aggressive treatment.

Multiple stories from across the snooker circuit highlight the man's extraordinary willingness to fulfill commitments to public appearances and promotional work, all while undergoing treatment.

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter kept playing through the illness and received a tumultuous reception at The Crucible Theatre when he played at the World Championships that year.

When he succumbed in the mid-2000s, snooker's family-like circuit lost one of its most popular brothers.

"The pain is immense," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to suffer such a loss."

A Foundation for the Future: Inspiring Youth

Hunter's true contribution would be felt not in palaces and castles but in local sports centers across the UK.

The foundation he inspired, set up before his death, would provide accessible training to children all over the country.

The scheme was so successful that, according to reports, local youth crime rates in some areas plummeted.

"The aim remained for a platform to help provide a positive outlet," one official said.

The Foundation helped pave the way for a huge coaching programme, which has provided playing opportunities to children globally.

"He would have embraced what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a chairman in the sport stated.

Always Remembered: Two Decades On

Historic matches of their son's matches online help his parents stay "close to him".

"I can access it and I can watch Paul at any moment," Kristina says. "It's marvellous!"

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she concludes. "Initially it was painful, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be mentioned at all."

While he never won the World Championship, the highly probable notion that Hunter would have secured snooker's top honor is a part of the sport's folklore.

The Masters, the competition with which he is most synonymous, begins later this month. The winner will lift the Paul Hunter Trophy.

But for all his successes, a generation after his death it is Paul Hunter's personality, as much his brilliant talent on the table, that will ensure he is forever celebrated.