17 hours ago
14
“‘I still believed in myself but it was quite soul-destroying out there,” Kyren Wilson says in a back room at Barratts Snooker Club in Northampton. The world champion once worked here as a barman because he had lost his place on tour after his first season as a professional in 2011. He was still only 19 and he had little idea that an avalanche of adversity would engulf him in the years ahead.
Wilson begins the defence of his world title, with a first-round match against Lei Peifan, in the venerable Crucible in Sheffield on Saturday morning. But it seems fitting that we should meet here, in the unpromising surroundings which once defined Wilson’s life, as he describes his extraordinary world championship backstory.
That tumultuous victory had been preceded by concerns over his father’s multiple sclerosis, a suspected brain tumour in his youngest son, a silent stroke for his wife and his mother’s breast cancer. But we start with his bar work at Barratts when he seemed so far away from playing at the Crucible.
“It’s a hard path back on to the tour,” Wilson says, “and you go from playing in perfect conditions in front of big crowds, against the world’s best players, to being in dingy snooker clubs on poor tables. It’s a really tough process because you know a first prize in an amateur event would be trebled with a first-round win on the world snooker tour. So I had to bide my time and keep plugging away.”
Wilson admits, in his amiable way, that: “I’d got up to 72 in the world, which was quite an accomplishment. But my game wasn’t good enough to stay on tour because the seasoned pros would pick me off. I was too raw and had to rebuild my game. But there was a lot of pressure. My girlfriend, Sophie, who is my wife now, had moved down from north Wales to Kettering to live with me. I was living off her wage and we needed the bar work. My family and I also said: ‘Let’s give snooker one last shot.”
His parents Rob and Sonya had given up so much to help him become a pro. Years before they even bought a derelict house, which had been empty for years, because his mum saw the potential to build a snooker room for him. They still needed to “remortgage the house two or three times” and life became more difficult when Wilson’s dad was diagnosed with MS.
“I’ll never forget the time he got told about it,” Wilson says. “He went upstairs and he was inconsolable. I remember me and my brother getting in from school and Mum saying: ‘Go and give your dad a cuddle.’ I didn’t realise what was going on or the impact it would have on the family. I was 16.”
The unforgiving reality of trying to making it as a pro soon bit hard and it was only in 2013, two years after his debut season, that he got back on tour. By September 2015 he was still struggling and almost completely broke. He won three qualifying matches to reach the Shanghai Masters but did not expect to remain long in China.
“I didn’t want to be there as it was my dad’s 50th and we’d arranged a surprise party for him in Tenerife with the whole family,” he continues.
“We’d scraped together the last €400 of savings so we could go to Tenerife. My wife and son [Finley] got there and she called me in Shanghai. She was so upset and said: ‘I’ve lost all the money. What can I do? I can’t even afford nappies now.’ We had no money left but thankfully my friends and family clubbed together and helped.”
How did it make him feel that they were destitute? “I wanted to leave Shanghai. Before every match I’m planning a route to Tenerife because my mum and dad have done so much for me. My dad has MS and this is his one and only 50th birthday. It was only when I got to the quarter-finals that I accepted the best present I could give him was that trophy. I beat Ding Junhui 5-4 on the black in the quarter-finals.
“There’s a video where my family are all in an Irish bar in Tenerife and they’ve managed to get the stream from Shanghai. They’re all celebrating – my nan, my grandad, my little boy, my best friend, everyone, going crazy when I potted the black.”
He then defeated Mark Allen and, in the final, Judd Trump. “They were both heavy favourites against me as I was an unknown. It was 9-9 in the final and Judd left me half a chance in the decider where I was cueing over the pack of reds and I dropped one in the middle pocket. If I missed that red, I’m leaving the table open but I made one of the best 70 breaks of my life, and won 10-9. I won £85,000 and my biggest win before that would have been around £10,000.
“Everything changed dramatically. It was not just the money but the confidence it gave me. I felt like I’d arrived as a professional and I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder. So it made me hungrier.”
Wilson’s career progressed steadily and in 2020, amid Covid, he reached his first world final when he lost to Ronnie O’Sullivan. But his family were eventually hit by a series of potentially catastrophic health concerns.
In 2023, with Wilson playing in the Players Championship where he reached the semi-finals, his youngest son, Bailey, fell extremely ill. “He had a seizure at home and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. At A&E they couldn’t work out what it was. They told my wife that there was a chance that he had a brain tumour and they couldn’t allow her in for his CT scan. Sophie kept it to herself for two days because I was in the middle of a competition. But she thought our six-year-old could have a brain tumour.”
Wilson sighs in relief. “It actually turned out to be one of the highest readings for wheat allergy and lactose intolerance. We’d been giving him Actimel thinking it was good gut bacteria. But it’s like lactose and, not knowing, we’re making it worse. So he went on a gluten-free, lactose-free diet and reversed it.”
But there were hidden consequences. Sophie, who had long suffered from epilepsy but been free from medication for five years, endured a terrifying episode. “I was practising here at the club,” Wilson says, “and my brother called me and said: ‘Come home, it’s not good.’ I’ve had calls before where someone’s said: ‘Sophie’s had a seizure, you need to get back.’ This was much more serious.
after newsletter promotion
“I think the stress led to her having a silent stroke where she was locked in her body. She could blink and nod, but couldn’t talk or move her limbs. The worst was when we got her to A&E and she was on a bed and the paramedics were trying to get her into the wheelchair. But she couldn’t lift her legs to get into the wheelchair. It was very scary.”
Did he fear permanent paralysis? “Yeah,” he says softly. “She couldn’t speak in A&E and, funnily enough, this elderly lady was talking to me about snooker. She was a big fan and asked Sophie if she could take a photo of us. Sophie couldn’t say no or hold the camera. But she’s seen the funny side and started laughing. Within two hours her words started to come back. Maybe she just needed a giggle.”
Sophie had to relinquish her driving licence for a year but, having resumed her epilepsy medication, the numb sensation down one side of her body has finally disappeared. “It’s now well under control and she’s back driving,” Wilson confirms.
He still had more worry to face. Three weeks before the world championships last year his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. “She kept it from me initially as she didn’t want to burden me. But then she told me because I knew something wasn’t right. She said: ‘Look, the outcome will be positive. Don’t worry about it.’ She had the tumour removed, a small dose of radiotherapy and, touch wood, she’s all clear now.”
Wilson seems impressively calm but he says: “I’ve got an erratic side and that came out two weeks before the worlds. We’ve got cameras in the house and Sophie logged into the system and saw me on the floor in my snooker room at home. I was in floods of tears. She gave me a cuddle, picked me up and said: ‘Come on, crack on.’
“That’s when we introduced Chris O’Connor, who works with solution hypnotherapy. I saw him every day before the worlds and he gave me a different mindset. I suddenly saw that snooker is not the be-all and end-all. Family is so important and, without your health, you’re nothing. I felt so calm, sleep was good, my stress bucket slowly emptied. I was raring to go by the worlds.”
After Wilson beat Jak Jones 18-14 in the final he sat down in his chair at the Crucible and sobbed as the enormity of all his family had faced, and what he had achieved, poured out of him. His wife and sons joined him in a memorable and profoundly emotional celebration.
Wilson reaches for his phone. “My screensaver is me about to walk out for the final session. And here’s another photo from the next morning. Can you see me in bed? I’ve got the lid on my head, and there’s the trophy with my wife and two boys in bed. I’d crashed at 8.30am and that was taken at 10. I’d had an hour-and-a-half and I was still very drunk. It was incredible.”
His dad’s MS remains a worry but Wilson highlights his courage. “It’s a gradual decline, but that’s testament to my dad’s mental strength because he’s got one of the most aggressive forms of MS. He’ll hate me saying this, but it’s only recently that he’s got a mobility scooter. He calls it the Ferrari. He’s battled MS for so long and it’s only now that he’s accepting help.”
That same tenacity defines the 33-year-old and he is determined to win multiple world titles. “I’ve had a very good season. I won a tournament soon after the worlds and that eased the pressure. Winning becomes a habit, and you crave that feeling.”
He is world No 2 and, at the Players Championship last month, he beat Trump, the runaway tour leader, 10-9 in a dramatic final. It continued the hex Wilson holds over Trump. Apart from a solitary 4-3 loss in Gibraltar, Wilson has beaten Trump every time they have met in a final – including three times this season. “He makes my job very easy, because he’s world No 1. If you don’t play well, you’re going home. That inspires me against him.”
Wilson makes his ambitions plain for this year’s tournament: “I’m very hungry to do it again. I’m not ready to give up that tag of being the current world champion. But it’s not just me that’s world champion. It’s my whole family. We’re all world champions.”
