'He was a joy': Honoring snooker's taken talent a score of years on.

All the Leeds-born talent always wished to do was play snooker.

A sporting bug, caught at the very young age of three with the help of a tiny snooker set on his home's central table in his Leeds home, would result in a professional career that saw him secure six major trophies in a six-year span.

Now marks a score of years since the beloved Hunter succumbed to cancer, days short to his twenty-eighth birthday.

But despite the loss of a generational talent that went beyond the game he loved, his legacy and impact on the game and those who knew him persist as powerful today.

'The game was his life': Early Beginnings

"We could not have predicted in a lifetime our son would become a professional snooker player," Hunter's mum states.

"Yet he just adored it."

Alan Hunter remembers how his son "cared little for anything else" except for snooker as a child.

"His dedication was constant," he adds. "He would play every night after school."

After persistently asking his dad to take him to a nearby hall to play on full-size tables at the age of eight, the aspiring talent made the jump from table top snooker with aplomb.

His raw skill would be developed by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from neighbouring Bradford, at a now defunct club in the north Leeds suburb of Yeadon.

Quick Success: From Teenager to Champion

With his family's urging to do his homework regularly going unheeded as the game dominated, his parents took the "chance" of taking Hunter out of school at the fourteen years old to fully dedicate himself to carving out a career in the game.

It proved a masterstroke. Within half a decade, their still-teenage son had won his first ranking title, the Welsh Open of 1998.

Considered one of snooker's hardest tournaments to win because of the lineup featuring exclusively the best, Hunter triumphed a trio of times, in consecutive years.

'A Gracious Competitor': A Legacy of Character

But for all his achievements in competition, away from the game Hunter's humble charm never faded.

"His demeanor was excellent did Paul," Alan says. "He got on with everybody."

"If you met him you'd enjoy his company," Kristina states. "He was enjoyable. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's widow Lindsey, with whom he had a child, describes him as an "amazing, young cheeky beautiful soul" who was "humorous, caring" and "typically the final guest at the party".

With his natural likability, youthful appearance and straight-talking media manner, not to mention his considerable talent, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was nicknamed 'The Beckham of the Baize'.

Facing Adversity: His Final Years

In that year, a year that should have marked the peak of his powers, Hunter was found to have cancer and would later undergo chemotherapy.

Multiple stories from across the snooker circuit attest to the man's extraordinary dedication to honor obligations to public appearances and promotional work, all while undergoing treatment.

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter kept playing through the illness and received a standing ovation at The famous Sheffield venue when he competed in the World Championships that year.

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

"It is tragic," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to suffer such a loss."

A Foundation for the Future: Giving Back

Hunter's true impact would be felt not in royal circles but in local sports centers across the UK.

The charity in his name, set up before his death, would provide no-cost coaching to children all over the country.

The initiative was so successful that, according to reports, anti-social behavior in some areas fell sharply.

"The aim remained for a platform to help offer a constructive activity," one coach said.

The Foundation helped establish the basis for a significant coaching programme, which has extended playing opportunities to children all over the world.

"Paul would have loved what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a senior official in the sport stated.

Forever in Memory: 20 Years Later

Historic matches of their son's matches on YouTube help his parents stay "connected to him".

"I can bring it up and I can watch Paul whenever I wish," Kristina says. "It's wonderful!"

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she continues. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody mention him than him not be spoken of."

Even though he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have gone on to lift snooker's greatest prize is ingrained in the sport's folklore.

The Masters, the competition with which he is most associated, 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 spirit, as much his dazzling snooker ability, that will ensure he is never forgotten.