Anthony Hamilton has retired from professional snooker. He was/is probably one of the most underrated professional players. He’s highly respected and appreciated by those who have played him in practice, notably by Ronnie, but most fans never warmed to him. He has neither the style, nor the looks associated with stardom. I always liked him.
Anthony Hamilton has called time on an epic professional journey, which extends back to 1991 when he first turned professional. He is now setting his sights on becoming one of the sport’s top coaches, but before he does that, we have asked him to reflect on his own time on the baize.
The Sheriff of Pottingham fell off tour at the end of last season. Hamilton had hoped to spend one more year on tour and attended Q School with that in mind. However, it wasn’t to be and the 53-year-old has stepped out of the professional arena for the last time.
Having spent his career being respected by his peers as one of the sport’s great competitors, he eventually stepped into the winner’s circle for the first time in 2017 when he defeated Ali Carter in the German Masters final. Since then, injuries and eyesight issues have prevented Hamilton from hitting the same heights, but he has shown his typical tenacity to retain professional status until now.
We’ve caught up with Hamilton and asked him to name the top five moments of his career, which he has done in chronological order…
1988
“My first moment came when I was an amateur. I won a pro-am in Croydon for £1,000. It was the biggest pro-am that I’d won. My mum, dad and I had been travelling the country every single weekend for three or four years previously. Learning how to lose and all of that business. It was the first time that we won a big tournament. I remember being ecstatic and I’ve never been happier since. I remember on the drive home we all felt like we had won the lottery. All of the hard work had paid off. We all realised, at that moment, it was going in the right direction. An amazing feeling. I beat Ken Doherty in the semis and then a guy called Darren Clarke in the final. It was the first of many, but it was the first. We won it as a family and it is still my favourite memory.
“My mum was a secretary at schools and then charities after that and my dad was a hard-working guy on the building site. They literally, for six or seven years, took me to tournaments every weekend. It was 50 weekends a year. We would get up at 6am and travel old school, no Satnav and we were going to all sorts of different parts of the country. You’d then spend all day in the club from 10am to 2 or 3 in the morning. All the losses and all of the arguments, they were there for it all. What more can you ask from your parents than that? They were the best days and they will never be beaten. I was with my family.”
1992
“This was another first, it was the first time I played at a venue. I came through qualifying at the Norbreck Castle for a couple of years. That was madness. You’d be there for three months at a time, playing 90 matches on the spin. This was the first time I played at a final stage venue. It was the Hexagon in Reading for the Grand Prix. I beat Tony Jones 5-4, then I lost to Alan McManus in the last 32. It was this beautiful theatre. To be at the venue, it was the first time I felt part of the show. Straight away I recognised this and realised it was for me. What a buzz. Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry and Jimmy White were walking about the place and I was suddenly right in the thick of it. To be on TV for the first time was nerve wracking, but a thrill.
“All the matches you’ve watched on television over the years and then it is you being filmed. It is like watching a film and then suddenly being in one yourself. I was part of the show that I’d been watching for seven or eight years. You change from that point and feel more of a professional. You aren’t qualifying anymore, you are part of the show. All the first moments in your career are a buzz.”
1999
“This was my first ranking final. It was the British Open in Plymouth. I faced Fergal O’Brien and we played a brilliant final. It was a dead high standard. I think I played better than Fergal, but he won all of the tight frames, because he is a machine. I didn’t really know what you were supposed to do in a final. It was all new. I had no idea it was traditional to ask your girlfriend to come and all of that sort of stuff. I remember my girlfriend fell out with me, asking why I didn’t invite her over, but I just genuinely didn’t think of it!
“I had a tough draw all week. If I had seen that beforehand, I wouldn’t have turned up! It was Marco Fu, Mark Williams, Paul Hunter then Stephen Hendry. I started off the final with two century breaks, which must be rare in a first final. I loved it. Playing in finals is a different thing altogether. This time it wasn’t about being part of the show, you are the show. There was added pressure and it was interesting. All eyes are on you and it felt good. I played well in all of the finals I got to. I have good memories of finals, even though I lost two and won once. I lost this final, but it was against a good guy. It wasn’t like losing to somebody who had won 15 ranking events. Fergal was having the best day of his life and if I could have chosen to lose to anyone, it would have been him.”
2004
“This is a bit of a personal one, playing Steve Davis at the Crucible. It was the first round and Steve was on the way down in his career, but it was an honour to face my favourite player and favourite man on the tour, in the best venue. Win or lose, it would have been one of my favourite days as a professional. It wasn’t easy, he was much better than I thought he’d be. I remember being 9-4 up and thinking I have it won. He started playing great snooker and next thing I knew, it was 9-7. I was right under it. I was having a great day playing against my idol, but I didn’t want to lose. I saw the competitive animal inside of him first hand. I have nothing but respect for him. To see him come out to the Crucible with all of the people cheering him on was a buzz. I had to pinch myself, I couldn’t believe I was playing the Nugget at the Crucible. It was different class.
“When the draw came out, it was like I’d won all of the lotteries in one go. I’d already played Jimmy there in 97. The crowd noise for those guys is out of the park. You feel like the baddy in the room and rightly so, these guys are legends. Steve knew that arena better than I know my own lounge. To feel his presence at the table was special. I was really nervous because of who he was. It was like playing a God. Even though I won, I knew there was only one real player at that table and it wasn’t me. It was a surreal moment.”
2017
“The last one has to be winning the German Masters. Mainly because, I can go full circle, the first one was with my parents and so was the last one. There was 30 years between them and we were nearly as happy in Berlin as we were in Croydon. It was something that nobody expected, least of all myself. I couldn’t have asked for a better venue to win my one and only ranking tournament in. The Tempodrom is special. If you were watching a film with this plot, then you’d have said it was a bit far fetched. The way I played was a memory that I will take with me. I didn’t just win, I played nearly all of my game against Ali Carter. It was the first time I’d played like that for a good 15 years. Because of injuries I hadn’t felt like that for along time. I guess because I’d got to the final, I felt it was my one last chance and I found something. I played like I did in my late 20s and to do that when it really mattered was a feeling you can’t buy.
“I remember walking across the road afterwards, in the freezing cold with nowhere near enough clothes on, with this trophy in my hands. I took it straight up to my room, pressed the button for the lift and saw myself in the mirror with a trophy. It was a surreal moment of realisation. The next morning I knocked on my parents door and had a cup of tea and a chat. We were laughing at the madness of it all. That was the best moment. What a great week, I couldn’t ask for any more.
“You want to win with your nearest and dearest. It adds something to it. The reason my mum and dad were there was purely because of the venue. I thought they had to witness it. The arena is so special and a bit different. I don’t know how they found watching the final with 3,000 people. They could have been twitching, but I was pretty chilled out. I played five or six times at the Tempodrom. It is a buzzy sort of place, with great fans and Berlin is a brilliant city. It was always my favourite tournament other than the World Championship, even before I won it.”
What’s next?
“I’m already in talks with a few players about coaching them. I’m having this week off. After this week I will phone them, see how they want to work and when they want to work. I’ll get straight on it. There is no time to rest for the professionals. If they want help, they need it now.
“They are all people that I really like. I’m very excited. I think I will be more nervous as a coach than as a player. The last of my hair is going to fall out pretty quickly. I think if one of my players can win a tournament, it would be the same and I might even get more out of it. I know how important it is to these guys. If I can add a 5% boost to making that happen, I will get a huge amount out of it.”
“When the curtain falls, it’s time to get off the stage,” said prime minister John Major after his disastrous general election defeat in 1997.
Sport, like politics, can be brutal. On top and seemingly imperious one moment, yesterday’s news the next.
For most, though, the decline is a gradual process. Some hang on, certain they can reclaim former glories, others accept the dying of the light and retire gracefully.
Anthony Hamilton did just that this week. A professional since 1991, a former top 16 player and ranking event winner, he has been struggling with various health issues for the last few years, costing him fluency and making every match a battle.
Hamilton was relegated from the circuit after the World Championship. He entered Q School but lost in both events and has now decided to retire.
From the outside, it may look like an easy decision. He clearly isn’t the player he was in his pomp. He was putting himself through pain just playing. But it’s never as simple as that.
Playing snooker was not just his profession, it was a way of life since boyhood. It tethered him to a sense of himself. He could define himself as a snooker player. He had a routine: practising, going to tournaments, marking out the year by the event schedule.
Now that structure is gone. At 53, his life has changed and that will take some getting used to.
Hamilton is not one of those too-cool-for-school types who pretends snooker gets in the way, or that he doesn’t really like it. He loves it. They all do. Even when it becomes a grind, it’s embedded deep in the blood.
That’s why he plans to stick around as a coach, putting his energies and considerable wisdom into helping others, as Terry Griffiths did when he retired in 1997, as Fergal O’Brien is doing now two years after hanging up his cue.
It is rare for a successful player to completely walk away from the sport. Tony Meo, the 1989 British Open champion, did so when he left the circuit in the late 1990s, but the likes of Neal Foulds and Alan McManus went into broadcasting, where they have become popular and respected figures and remained involved with the sport.
Others, such as Stephen Hendry, have attempted to come back, but this never works out in any sport. Greats such as Hendry are playing against their own pasts as much as the other competitors. For the seven times world champion there was also a reality check: standards had increased.
He had obviously missed the cut and thrust of the professional game, the excitement of putting on the waistcoat, walking out in front of a crowd. But being unable to perform to anything close to his former level left him feeling dejected.
Retirement can seem like a dream scenario – freedom from responsibility, the opportunity to travel, to spend time with loved ones. For many people that dream becomes a reality, but for those involved in top level sport, it can feel like a come down. The thrill of competition is replaced by the humdrum.
It’s noticeable how so many sports people take up golf when their days at the top are done. Andy Murray seemed to do this almost immediately after retiring from tennis. Perhaps they need to stay in a competitive environment, to feel that they are giving their all to something where there is clearly defined winning or losing as an outcome. Hendry himself is a member at Sunningdale.
His old rival Jimmy White, now 63, is still slogging away, the recipient of another WST wildcard. In fairness to White, few players put more work in. If anything, it means too much to him at an age where he should just be enjoying it. He seems to get tense before and during matches. Deep down, it must hurt that he cannot regularly produce the brilliance of his heyday.
Psychologists may conclude that White, who famously did not become world champion, has unfinished business with the game. Maybe, but that possibly goes for every player. Hendry still smarts at failing to win an eighth world title in 2002. He stays in touch with the game now through his popular YouTube channel, Cue Tips.
Ronnie O’Sullivan has threatened retirement so often that those attempting to keep score have lost count. The first instance was at the 1994 UK Championship. He was 18. When, in 2012, he did take several months off, he missed it. He was at home watching. He even drove to the Masters in January 2013 to watch a semi-final. He came back a few weeks later to win a fifth world title.
The day will come for O’Sullivan, as it will for all players, to finally stop. Some do it on their own terms, others wait for the inevitable slide towards relegation. Mark Williams says he will play until he drops off tour – although he would be an obvious candidate for a wildcard.
From next year, the Class of ’92 can play in seniors events, which offers the opportunity for them to still be competitive long into the future.
Maybe nobody ever really retires. The first line of all of their obituaries is that they were snooker players, just as John Major will always be remembered as prime minister.
So Hamilton may leave the stage, but he will always be a much respected member of the cast.
David mentions that, from next year on the class of 92 will be able to play on the Seniors tour, and so will Antony if he wishes. I do hope to see him there. I do hope that his decision will turn into an “Au revoir!” rather than an “Adieu!” to snooker. The competitive animal within never dies. The thrill of the battle, and the pride in their abilities never goes.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 