Alex 'huricane' Higgins. Flamboyant player.
Alex Higgins was born Alexander Gordon Higgins in Belfast on March 18, 1949. He had three sisters. His father, who had been struck by a lorry as a boy and was unable to read or write, worked as a wheel tapper. His mother brought in extra money from her job as a cleaner.
He started playing snooker at the age of 11, often in the Jampot club in the Sandy Row area. At 14 he left for a career England as a jockey, working with trainer Eddie Reavey in Berkshire. However, he put on a lot of weight and was released without ever having ridden in public. He returned to Belfast and by 1965, aged 16, he had compiled his first maximum break. In 1968 he won the All-Ireland and Northern Ireland amateur snooker championships.
His speed around the table and flamboyant style earned him the nickname “Hurricane Higgins”, and made him a high-profile player. His highly unusual technique sometimes included a body swerve and movement when cueing, as well as a stance that was higher than for most professionals. While he was arguably a classic example of how not to cue, he nevertheless managed to pot balls better than most. He also drank and smoked during tournaments.
Alex Higgins turned professional at the age of 22, winning the World Snooker Championship at his first attempt in 1972 against John Spencer, making him the youngest winner of the title until Stephen Hendry’s 1990 victory at the age of 21. He again reached the final, in April 1976, losing to Ray Reardon, and was also runner-up to Cliff Thorburn in 1980. However, he won his second title in 1982 after beating Reardon 18–15 (with a 135 total clearance in the final frame); it was an emotional as well as professional victory for him. He would have been ranked No 1 in the world rankings for the 1982/83 season had he not forfeited ranking points following disciplinary action.
A volatile personality got him into frequent fights and arguments, both on and off the snooker table. One of the most serious of these clashes was when he head-butted a referee at the UK championship in 1986. This led to him being fined £12,000 and banned from five tournaments. Another came at the 1990 world championship; after losing his first-round match to Steve James, he punched tournament official Colin Randle in the stomach before the start of a press conference at which he announced his retirement. This, added to his having threatened to have Dennis Taylor “shot”, led to a ban for the whole of the following season.
He had threatened the Catholic Denis Taylor: “I come from Shankhill and you come from Coalisland” he said, “and the next time you are in Northern Ireland I will have you shot.”
While revered by his millions of fans, as a sportsman he left much to be desired. If he lost, there was always an excuse. The cloth was the wrong pace; his cue was badly balanced; the temperature was too cold; the walls were painted the wrong colour; the referee was standing too close. It hardly mattered what was amiss, so long as Alex Higgins was not at fault.
His unorthodox yet effective play was perhaps best encapsulated in his break of 69, made under unusual pressure, against Jimmy White in the penultimate frame of their World Professional Snooker Championship semi-final in 1982. Alex was 0–59 down in that frame and probably one ball away from going out, but managed to compile an extremely challenging clearance during which he was scarcely in position until the colours.
Former world champion Dennis Taylor recalls a three-quarter-ball pot on a blue into the green pocket especially memorable, not only for its extreme degree of difficulty but for enabling Higgins to continue the break and keep White off the table and unable to clinch victory at that moment.
In the TV documentary The Story of Snooker (2002), Steve Davis considered Higgins the “one true genius that snooker has produced”, despite the autobiography of his contemporary fellow professional Willie Thorne criticising Higgins as “not a great player”. Higgins arguably fulfilled this potential only intermittently during his career peak in the 1970s and 80s.
Alex Higgins was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1997. He returned to competitive action in September 2007 at the VC Poker Irish Professional Championship in Dublin but was whitewashed 5–0 by former British Open champion Fergal O’Brien in the first round.
He continued to play, enjoyed “hustling” for drink money in clubs in Northern Ireland and beyond against allcomers; and in May 2009 he entered the Northern Ireland amateur championship, “to give it a crack”, but failed to appear for his match.
Alex Higgins was an inspiration to many of today’s professional snooker players including Ken Doherty and Ronnie O’Sullivan who, in an interview, stated: “Alex was an inspiration to players like Jimmy White and thousands of snooker players all over the country, including me. The way he played at his best is the way I believe the game should be played. It was on the edge, keeping the crowd entertained and glued to the action.”
It is estimated that he earned and mostly spent a £3 million fortune over twenty years. However, besides his throat cancer, he continued to struggle with financial problems and drunkenness. He also admitted to using cocaine and marijuana.
Alex Higgins was twice married, first to an Australian called Cara. “She was the daughter of a racehorse trainer, so she had lots of money,” he explained. “I’m sure she would say our five-year spell together was very pleasant.” What Cara actually said was “That lunatic has beaten me up.”
In 1980 he married Lynn Robbins and they had son and a daughter.
By 1987 he had acquired a new girlfriend called Siobhan Kidd, an art restorer and psychology graduate, who described him in 1988 as “the gentlest man I have ever met”. Two years later she was telling police how he had held her down and broken her cheekbone by striking her with a hairdryer.
At the end of his life he was an alcoholic and more or less destitute; he had lost his home in Cheshire and was living in sheltered accommodation in Belfast. In April 2010, his friends announced that they had set up a campaign to help raise the £20,000 he needed for teeth implants, to enable him to eat properly again and put on weight. Higgins lost his teeth after intensive radiotherapy used to treat his throat cancer. It was reported that since losing them he had been living on liquid food, and had become increasingly depressed.
He published his autobiography, From the Eye of the Hurricane: My Story, in 2007.
Alex Higgins died at his Belfast home on July 24, 2010.
He once said -
“I’m a one-off, a mystery man that would drive the world’s most eminent psychiatrist to his consulting couch.”