'He brought laughter': Reflecting on the game's taken talent 20 years on.

All Paul Hunter always wished to do was compete on the baize.

A sporting bug, sparked at the tender age of three with the help of a small snooker set on his family's living room table in his Leeds home, would lead to a professional career that saw him claim 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 birthday marking 28 years.

But despite the passing of a phenomenal skill that went beyond the game he loved, his enduring mark on snooker and those who were close to him endure as strong as ever.

'He just loved it': The Formative Years

"We could not have predicted in a billion years the boy would become a professional snooker player," his mother says.

"Yet he just adored it."

Hunter's father recalls how his son "showed no interest in anything else" except for snooker as a child.

"He was relentless," he notes. "He competed every night after school."

After persistently asking his dad to take him to a local club to play on regulation tables at the age of eight, the young Hunter made the leap from home play with great skill.

His mercurial talent would be coached by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, at a now defunct club in the area of Yeadon.

Rapid Rise: A Star is Born

With his parents' pleas to do his homework often being ignored as practice took priority, his parents took the "gamble" of taking Hunter out of school at the fourteen years old to fully dedicate himself to building a career in the game.

It paid off in spades. Within five years, their adolescent had won his initial major win, the late-nineties Welsh championship.

Considered one of snooker's hardest tournaments to win because of the lineup featuring exclusively the best, Hunter won on three occasions, in the early 2000s.

'A Gracious Competitor': A Legacy of Character

But for all his success on the table, away from the game Hunter's down-to-earth charisma never faded.

"He had a great temperament did Paul," Alan says. "He was liked by everybody."

"When encountering him you'd take to him," Kristina continues. "Paul was fun. He'd make you feel at ease."

Hunter's wife Lindsey, with whom he had a daughter, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "funny, kind" and "typically the final guest at the party".

With his effortless appeal, boyish good looks and honest interview style, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the modern era.

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

A Brave Battle: A Fight Against Cancer

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

Multiple accounts from across the snooker circuit attest to the man's extraordinary commitment to fulfill commitments to exhibitions, events and press interviews, all while undergoing treatment.

Despite difficult symptoms, Hunter played on through the illness and received a rapturous applause at The famous Sheffield venue when he played at the World Championships that year.

When he passed away in the mid-2000s, snooker's close-knit fraternity lost one of its most popular brothers.

"It is tragic," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to go through that pain."

A Foundation for the Future: Giving Back

Hunter's true legacy would be felt not in royal circles but in snooker halls and clubs across the UK.

The foundation he inspired, set up before his death, would provide free snooker sessions to youths all over the country.

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

"The idea was for a platform to help offer a constructive activity," one coach said.

The Foundation helped lay the groundwork for a huge 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 chairman in the sport stated.

Never Forgotten: 20 Years Later

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

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

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she adds. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be mentioned at all."

Although he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have secured snooker's top honor is ingrained in the sport's history.

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, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's spirit, as much his brilliant talent on the table, that will ensure he is forever celebrated.