He might be the greatest player ever to have picked up a cue but after his latest defeat today, Stephen Hendry told of the “chaos” inside his head at the moment that is making things so difficult for him at the moment…
As Stephen told the BBC:
“It’s hard to pot balls when there’s chaos inside my head,”
“I know what causes it but I’m not going to tell you.
“The only positive thing from the match is that I played so badly but still only lost 9-7.
“People talk about how good the standard is. But if I got 30% of my old form back, I’d be competing. I only made one break over 70 and I made a lot of mistakes.
“Even if I’d played 5% better I would have won. I’m not going to say I’m playing well in practice because I’m bored of saying it.”
And on Setanta Sports:
“It’s only the chaos in my head I have to sort out. There’s nothing wrong with my game.
“When you get past the expletives, I can look at the positives. It will come, I will win again.
“At the moment I’m obviously not ready.
“But if I can play that badly and only lose 9-7, then there’s no fears for me.”
“You can’t sound all cocky and confident when you’ve not got the results to back it up, which I haven’t.
“It’s a long way back but I’m still optimistic about the future. People may chose to write me off but I certainly don’t.
“It’s just very frustrating when you’re down on the shot and you’ve got chaos in your head. It’s very difficult to concentrate and stay focused.
“You can’t just say you’re confident because you’ve won lots of tournaments.
“People talk a lot about the standard of the game but if I can get 30 per cent of my old form back I’ll compete again.”
It is such a shame to hear that Stephen is thinking like that but as ever he is quite right as I was quite surprised to see that he managed to win seven frames playing the way he was in both today and yesterday’s sessions against Lee. It was not just the long potting that was out but his famous break-building was not there either and with a pot success rate of about 80%, he did not deserve to go through into the last 16.
Whether he can sort out his demons I don’t know but it sounds like he is rapidly getting fed up of coming up short in snooker’s biggest tournaments…