Higgins looks to reset after disappointing Masters exit
JOHN HIGGINS is ready to hit the reset button ahead of this year’s World Championship. The Scot, 47, suffered a 6- 3 first- round defeat to Jack Lisowski at the Masters invitational event and the Wishaw Wizard has endured a tough season and is missing next week’s World Grand Prix as a result.
The four- time world champion needs a decent run of results to get into next month’s 16- man Players Championship and would likely need to win a title to reach April’s eight- man Tour Championship.
The world No 6 admitted: “I hope I can reset and get going in the latter half of the season. I’ve probably not been in this position in the last few years where I have some big gaps between now and the World Championship. Who knows? It might be a blessing a little bit with how the season’s gone so far.”
Higgins has spoken about potentially getting a sports psychologist on board for the last few years of his career, believing snooker, without the ability to instantly rectify a mistake, is probably the toughest sport to deal with mentally.
Many of the sport’s top stars have mind coaches in their corner or people who regularly travel with them on tour. World champion and world No. 1 Ronnie O’Sullivan has renowned sports psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters on speed dial and is rarely seen at tournaments without at least one friend.
UK champion Mark Allen has enlisted the help of psychologist Paul Gaffney this season and has gone from strength to strength.
Former world champion Judd Trump and world No 8 Kyren Wilson both have their brothers in tow at tournaments.
“I think snooker’s the loneliest sport without a doubt,” Higgins said. “It’s an unforgivable sport as well, when you look at other singular sports like tennis or golf you can rectify a bad shot after you play a bad shot, but in this game if you play a bad shot you can go through mental torture.
“I haven’t got any further with it
[ a sports psychologist], but I’m not in the next few events so it’s something I might look at.
“It could just be a case of someone coming to events with you. It’s a difficult one because it’s a singular sport and you want to do your own thing. You look at the majority of the top boys and they have people in their corner and people rooting for them. It’s a little bit more difficult as you get
older so you might look at something.”
At the Masters yesterday, Barry Hawkins whitewashed Mark Allen 6- 0 in the first round as the former champion’s miserable recent form in the event continued at Alexandra Palace. Allen lifted the title in 2018 but has not won a single match since and managed a high break of just 45 against fellow left- hander Hawkins, who was runner- up to Neil Robertson 12 months ago.
Hawkins, who will face Judd Trump or Ryan Day in the quarterfinals, said: “I think the result flatters me a little bit. I think my safety won me the match really. I played a lot of good safety and created chances that way.
“I think if I was ultra- critical, I
could have scored a little better but I kept Mark under pressure and I didn’t do that much wrong.”
A disappointed Allen was quick to pay tribute to Hawkins, telling Eurosport: “I probably should have won the first frame and had a couple of chances in frame four, other than that, I thought he was phenomenal.
“Some of his safety play was ridiculously good. There were a number of times I came to the table consecutively scratching my head, I had no shot at all. I said to him at the end, it’s probably one of the best safety performances I’ve ever played against as a pro. Granted I missed a few balls as well, but you just have to credit Barry, he just froze me out. It was a phenomenal performance.”