His opening match is against Barry Hawkins on Saturday and no, he cannot wait to get out there. Yeah, he is just hoping to play as well as he can and enjoy the experience. Small talk.
The most difficult part of an interview is picking the moment to ask the question you really want answered. The prospect of one of the game’s most promising talents making his world championship debut at the tender age of 21 is interesting enough, but it is not what makes Lisowski’s story unique.
What I really want to know is how a young man still undergoing treatment for cancer, still fearing the return of the disease that ravaged his teenage body, can think about anything else at all. Lisowski considers this for a while.
“It’s always in the back of your mind,” he says eventually. “I’m always thinking about it. It never really leaves you. You just learn to live your life and appreciate it whilst you’ve got it.”
Few of us will ever know how Lisowski felt in the summer of 2008, when he visited his local doctor and was told he had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. He was 16, and had left school two months earlier. Already he was being groomed for great things in the game. The previous year, he had reached the final of Junior Pot Black, an achievement which had seen him play a frame at the Crucible.
How does a carefree teenager, dreaming and indestructible, process something like that? “You don’t, really,” Lisowski says. “I just remember getting told, and then everything kind of went in slow motion. I remember feeling so scared.”
Lisowski’s first thought was to the immediate future. “What do we do now? What’s the plan? The doctor didn’t know, because it was such an early stage and he wasn’t a cancer specialist.
“So I just went away in shock. I was with my mum, who got my dad to come home. I didn’t cry for a few days, I don’t know why. Everything’s up in the air. And then you start Googling your actual illness. I didn’t even know what lymphoma was. But then, that’s when your family comes into it. You speak to them, it makes you stronger, and then you start getting ready to fight.”
He had been lucky. The diagnosis came just a day after his initial scan, a stroke of fortune that improved his survival chances immensely. Not that it was ever going to be easy. Over nine months, Lisowski underwent 16 courses of chemotherapy. During that time, he says three things got him through: his family, his “amazing” doctor Sean Elyan, and snooker.
“The snooker was what I thought about,” he says. “I played a few shots in my house, but I just had no energy, and I couldn’t concentrate. I felt too weak and sick, so throughout the nine months of treatment, I was just waiting to get better so that I could play again. Then as soon as I was in remission, I couldn’t wait. I was playing all the time.”
Eventually, as the disease finally went into remission, Lisowski gathered the strength to climb out of his bed, and within weeks had reached the semi-finals of the European under-19 championship. In August 2010 he claimed the biggest scalp of his career, beating Mark Selby in a minor ranking event in Sheffield. This despite feeling “quite lethargic all the time”, a lingering consequence of the chemotherapy drugs. It is only in the last few months that he feels he has approached full fitness, a period that has seen him climb to No 37 in the rankings and earn a place in the world championship draw.
Things are finally looking up. “I’m totally back to normal now, and I feel better than ever,” Lisowski says. “I have check-ups every six months, so I’m still in remission. But at the end of this year, it’ll be the end of the fifth year of treatment, and that’s when they say I’m finished, I’ve got over it.”
As one battle comes to an end, more begin. Lisowski is now an ambassador for the Teenage Cancer Trust, urging today’s youth to be vigilant about the threat of the disease. Then, there is the small matter of this afternoon.
Expectations are justifiably high. Lisowski’s aggressive, entertaining left-handed style evokes that of his best friend and former flatmate Judd Trump, although it may be some time before he begins to emulate Trump’s success. “I’ve definitely improved a bit,” he says. “But every game is still very tough. I don’t necessarily expect to do really well, I’m just giving myself the best chance.”
It would be disingenuous to claim that cancer helped Lisowski’s game. But he certainly sees snooker at a different angle to many of his fellow professionals. “I feel like I shouldn’t be here,” he says. “So everything’s a bonus. In some ways, it makes you more determined. I’m just lucky to be here.
“But at the same time, it also makes you realise that it’s not that important. This is just a game.”
