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Snooker: Doherty sets out to regain greatest prize

KEN DOHERTY'S mum's television hasn't been quite the same since the day in 1998 when her son relinquished his World Championship title to John Higgins.

"Having to give the trophy back was the lowest point in my career," the 31-year-old Dubliner said as he looked forward to this year's Championship, which starts at the Crucible in Sheffield tomorrow. "Winning it wasn't just about the day I won or the celebrations that followed. After I gave the trophy back, coming to my mum's and not seeing it standing on the TV made me realise what I'd lost."

The television is not without silverware at the moment, supporting, as it does, the trophies from this year's Regal Welsh tournament (won in January) and this year's Thailand Masters (won in March). Capturing those made Doherty only the eighth player ever to win back-to-back ranking events and he would have made it a hat- trick last weekend at the Regal Scottish Open in Aberdeen had Peter Ebdon not prevailed 9-7 after an attritional final. But the world title remains the Holy Grail, as Doherty is well placed to testify.

"It means everything," he said. "When you know what it feels like to be a winner and you know what it feels like to be a loser, it's an easy choice to decide which one you want to be. Winning at the Crucible is every player's dream, the pinnacle of your career, it can't get any better than that."

After what happened in 1997, he should know. Not only did he become the first player to have won both the world amateur and world professional championships, he also became the first world champion from the Republic of Ireland, where the reaction was extraordinary.

"Fantastic," is how Doherty remembers his win. "Eamon Dunphy [the author and journalist] has been a friend of mine for years and he'd always said that if I ever won it I'd be paraded through the streets of Dublin in a double-decker bus and I never believed it and told him it'd never happen. And then it did. And we went on that bus all the way from the airport and people were screaming and shouting, waving at us."

There were, according to reports at the time, 250,000 people lining the streets. "I didn't count them," Doherty says laconically. "But there were a lot of people and it was just fantastic, great memories."

Doherty was Ireland's sports personality of the year in 1997. Mary Robinson, the then president of the country, called him "a fine ambassador and role model for the youth of our country". He paraded his trophy in front of a crowd of 55,000 at the Old Trafford home of Manchester United, his greatest sporting passion away from the green baize. And he even won a commendation from the Irish police. So gripped was Dublin on the evening of his win that the main police station did not report a single crime between 7pm and 10pm.

"I met the superintendent of police afterwards and he told me that at one point they even had to ring the telephone exchange and ask what was wrong with the phones because they'd had no calls. There was nothing wrong. Everyone was at home watching the snooker. The superintendent said to me: `We should have you on the TV more often'."

Having the trophy on his mum Rose's TV again is now Doherty's main aim. He goes to Sheffield as No 4 in the provisional world rankings, and, despite being only the fifth-favourite with the bookmakers (behind Mark Williams, Stephen Hendry, Higgins and Ronnie O'Sullivan) as the form player. He credits his resurgence to being settled in his personal life and to scrapping for results where once he might not have bothered.

"I'm happy in my personal life, that's definitely a factor," he said. "I'm feeling settled and I'm getting married later this year [in Australia, to his Australian fiancee, Sarah]. And I'm confident in my snooker.

"Even though I struggled all week in Aberdeen, I still made the final. That's not so bad. Good form is a bonus going into the World Championships. And confidence is a big thing in snooker."

Copyright 2001 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
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