Selt of the earth Hendry has a point to prove

STEPHEN HENDRY has been tipped to come out ‘all guns blazing’ when the seven-time world champion plays his first professional match since 2012 at the Gibraltar Open tonight.

Hendry, 52, has been off the circuit for over eight years but Matthew Selt, his close friend and first-round opponent, expects the Scot to feel right at home back in the spotlight.

‘I’m expecting all guns blazing from him. He’s playing snooker on a table that, even now, he’s more used to than I am. He only ever played on table one. He might be nervous at the start of it but he is in surroundings that he knows a lot better than I do,’ Selt told the World Snooker Tour. ‘No matter how well he plays, I’m sure he will feel comfortable with the situation.

‘He was once the greatest player of the sport. He is quite capable of reeling off four frames, so it isn’t a game I will be taking lightly.’

Selt considers Hendry (left) ‘the best of friends’, a relationship going back to the 2009 Shanghai Masters when the world’s best player went out of his way to help him on his first trip to China. ‘I’d heard he was a bit miserable but it turned out that couldn’t be further from the truth,’ recalled Selt.

‘It was funny more than anything when I saw the draw. I couldn’t stop laughing. Stephen only has one friend in the whole of the world and that is me! Now he is going to have to play me. I’ll smile the whole way through the game, regardless of the result.

‘If I lose people will say I’m rubbish, if he loses people will ask why he has come back. We will go out there and enjoy it, though.’