When Paul Hunter, snooker's world number four, won the Masters at Wembley on Sunday night, he did three things. First he picked up the trophy; second, he congratulated his fiancée Lindsey after an illicit visit to his dressing room turned a 6-2 deficit into a 10-9 victory ("She's very good at what she does"); third, he flicked his hair behind his ears.
Hunter's hair is long and blond. When he bestrides the green baize, he tucks it underneath an alice band. To some people this might sound like a David Beckham hairstyle and these people wouldn't be too far from the truth. While Beckham's locks are carefully styled to give them a bouncy volume, however, Hunter's are scraped right back over his forehead in the manner of Tony Soprano's enforcer, Furio. His alice band is different, too, made from metal and crafted in a style reminiscent of castle battlements, or ornate garden furniture.
Basically, the difference between Hunter's style and Beckham's is a few hundred pounds' worth of grooming. You can hardly blame the boy for trying, though, and simply by imitating the world's most metrosexual man, Hunter has got people talking about snooker again.
"Men wearing alice bands is nothing new," says Richard Ward, whose eponymous salon in London's Sloane Street is used to dealing with clients who want a little more than a wash and trim. "They've been wearing them for ages on the continent and, as the accent over here has been on growing their hair longer, British men are wearing them too. It's certainly a new thing for a snooker player, though, and I'd say it's a good thing for the game."
Back in the glory days of the late 70s and early 80s, snooker players were regularly noted for their haircuts. The floppy locks of the young Alex Higgins scrapped for attention with the back-combed slick of Ray Reardon and the big rugs of Kirk Stevens and Cliff Thorburn. Snooker may not have been a byword for style, but at least it featured men who took a vague interest in their appearance. By normal standards, this was pretty rock'n'roll, as in fact were the drink, drugs and free love that sloshed around the game.
By most accounts, snooker reached its peak of popularity in 1985 when 18.6m people tuned in to watch Dennis Taylor and his upside-down glasses beat Steve Davis to the World Championship. That match turned out to be the end of a glorious honeymoon as the characters drifted out of the game and took the mainstream popularity with it. For the next 15 years, the closest anyone got to snooker glamour - perennial rebel Jimmy White excepted - was Stephen Hendry's decision to wear a bit of gel in his short back and sides. Almost in sympathy, the game's fortunes withered too. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association was repeatedly accused of failing to take a sport that has always had a substantial grassroots base into the modern TV age.
Only 5m people watched Hunter's triumph in a tournament that has gone without a sponsor since a ban on tobacco advertising. Yet this total was recorded at 11pm on a Sunday night, while elsewhere Al Pacino's highly rated turn in Angels in America was reaching just 800,000 viewers. A televised Premiership match, that paragon of all things modern, often has less than a million people watching at home. Is snooker back?
Alongside Hunter and O'Sullivan, the tortured genius whose own fashion sense seems cribbed from Pacino's Scarface, there are other young bucks enlivening the modern game. Matthew Stevens, while not quite as lean, sports the Premiership quiff, flecked with a sunburst of highlights. Quintin Hann has a reputation that wouldn't look out of place among the greats, if only he'd get his game in order, while even Hendry now looks like a man who in the words of Rod Stewart (slightly amended) might steal his daddy's cue, and make a living out of playing snooker.
What the game doesn't have is a sprinkling of foreign glamour. Professional tournaments are held almost entirely in Britain and with prize money increasingly shrinking, any aspiring star - such as China's 16-year-old tyro Ding Junhui - would basically have to emigrate to Prestatyn (the location for almost every professional qualifying tournament) in order to earn a decent crust.
Still, with an estimated 3m players and illustrious supporters such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and AS Byatt (it's all about the geometry, you see), snooker's prospects are rosier than a red ball nestling on the lip of a pocket. Who would have thought that a hairband might come to mean so much?
When Paul Hunter, snooker's world number four, won the Masters at Wembley on Sunday night, he did three things. First he picked up the trophy; second, he congratulated his fiancée Lindsey after an illicit visit to his dressing room turned a 6-2 deficit into a 10-9 victory ("She's very good at what she does"); third, he flicked his hair behind his ears.
Hunter's hair is long and blond. When he bestrides the green baize, he tucks it underneath an alice band. To some people this might sound like a David Beckham hairstyle and these people wouldn't be too far from the truth. While Beckham's locks are carefully styled to give them a bouncy volume, however, Hunter's are scraped right back over his forehead in the manner of Tony Soprano's enforcer, Furio. His alice band is different, too, made from metal and crafted in a style reminiscent of castle battlements, or ornate garden furniture.
Basically, the difference between Hunter's style and Beckham's is a few hundred pounds' worth of grooming. You can hardly blame the boy for trying, though, and simply by imitating the world's most metrosexual man, Hunter has got people talking about snooker again.
"Men wearing alice bands is nothing new," says Richard Ward, whose eponymous salon in London's Sloane Street is used to dealing with clients who want a little more than a wash and trim. "They've been wearing them for ages on the continent and, as the accent over here has been on growing their hair longer, British men are wearing them too. It's certainly a new thing for a snooker player, though, and I'd say it's a good thing for the game."
Back in the glory days of the late 70s and early 80s, snooker players were regularly noted for their haircuts. The floppy locks of the young Alex Higgins scrapped for attention with the back-combed slick of Ray Reardon and the big rugs of Kirk Stevens and Cliff Thorburn. Snooker may not have been a byword for style, but at least it featured men who took a vague interest in their appearance. By normal standards, this was pretty rock'n'roll, as in fact were the drink, drugs and free love that sloshed around the game.
By most accounts, snooker reached its peak of popularity in 1985 when 18.6m people tuned in to watch Dennis Taylor and his upside-down glasses beat Steve Davis to the World Championship. That match turned out to be the end of a glorious honeymoon as the characters drifted out of the game and took the mainstream popularity with it. For the next 15 years, the closest anyone got to snooker glamour - perennial rebel Jimmy White excepted - was Stephen Hendry's decision to wear a bit of gel in his short back and sides. Almost in sympathy, the game's fortunes withered too. The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association was repeatedly accused of failing to take a sport that has always had a substantial grassroots base into the modern TV age.
Only 5m people watched Hunter's triumph in a tournament that has gone without a sponsor since a ban on tobacco advertising. Yet this total was recorded at 11pm on a Sunday night, while elsewhere Al Pacino's highly rated turn in Angels in America was reaching just 800,000 viewers. A televised Premiership match, that paragon of all things modern, often has less than a million people watching at home. Is snooker back?
Alongside Hunter and O'Sullivan, the tortured genius whose own fashion sense seems cribbed from Pacino's Scarface, there are other young bucks enlivening the modern game. Matthew Stevens, while not quite as lean, sports the Premiership quiff, flecked with a sunburst of highlights. Quintin Hann has a reputation that wouldn't look out of place among the greats, if only he'd get his game in order, while even Hendry now looks like a man who in the words of Rod Stewart (slightly amended) might steal his daddy's cue, and make a living out of playing snooker.
What the game doesn't have is a sprinkling of foreign glamour. Professional tournaments are held almost entirely in Britain and with prize money increasingly shrinking, any aspiring star - such as China's 16-year-old tyro Ding Junhui - would basically have to emigrate to Prestatyn (the location for almost every professional qualifying tournament) in order to earn a decent crust.
Still, with an estimated 3m players and illustrious supporters such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and AS Byatt (it's all about the geometry, you see), snooker's prospects are rosier than a red ball nestling on the lip of a pocket. Who would have thought that a hairband might come to mean so much?