'He was a joy': Remembering the game's taken talent 20 years on.

Everything the young snooker player ever wanted to do was practice the game.

A competitive passion, developed at the age of three with the help of a tiny snooker set on his parents' coffee table in Leeds, would result in a pro playing days that saw him claim six significant titles in a six-year span.

The present year marks 20 years since the popular Hunter passed away from cancer, days short to his 28th birthday.

But despite the loss of a phenomenal skill that transcended the game he loved, his enduring mark on snooker and those who knew him endure as vibrant now.

'He just loved it': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a million years our son would become a career sportsman," Kristina Hunter says.

"However he just loved it."

Alan Hunter recalls how his son "cared little for anything else" besides snooker as a young boy.

"He was relentless," he says. "He competed every night after school."

After repeatedly pleading with his dad to take him to a local club to play on full-size tables at the age of eight, the aspiring talent made the leap from table top snooker with aplomb.

His raw skill would be developed by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, at a now closed venue in the area of Yeadon.

Rapid Rise: From Teenager to Champion

With his mother and father's requests to do his homework often being ignored as the game dominated, his parents took the "risk" of taking Hunter out of school at the mid-teens to fully concentrate on forging a career in the game.

It was a resounding success. Within half a decade, their adolescent had won his first ranking title, the Welsh Open of 1998.

Considered one of snooker's most difficult competitions to win because of the involvement of exclusively the best, Hunter was victorious a trio of times, in consecutive years.

'Paul was fun': The Man Behind the Cue

But for all his success on the table, away from the game Hunter's humble charm never left him.

"He was incredibly composed did Paul," Alan says. "He was liked by everybody."

"When encountering him you'd take to him," Kristina adds. "He brought joy. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's wife Lindsey, with whom he had daughter Evie, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "humorous, caring" and "always the last to leave the party".

With his effortless appeal, boyish good looks and candid way with the press, not to mention his considerable talent, Hunter quickly became snooker's poster boy for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was nicknamed 'The Snooker World's Beckham'.

A Brave Battle: His Final Years

In the mid-2000s, a year that should have been the zenith of his talent, Hunter was diagnosed with cancer and would later undergo aggressive treatment.

Multiple accounts from across the snooker circuit highlight the man's extraordinary dedication to keep promises to public appearances and promotional work, all while going through treatment.

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter continued to compete through the illness and received a rapturous applause at The World Championship arena when he competed in the World Championships that year.

When he succumbed in the mid-2000s, snooker's tight community lost one of its best-loved members.

"It's awful," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to suffer such a loss."

An Enduring Legacy: The Paul Hunter Foundation

Hunter's true impact would be felt not in palaces and castles but in snooker halls and clubs across the UK.

The charity in his name, set up before his death, would provide accessible training to children all over the country.

The scheme was so successful that, according to reports, local youth crime rates in some areas fell sharply.

"The aim remained for a program to help offer a constructive activity," one official said.

The Foundation helped pave the way for a huge coaching programme, which has opened up playing opportunities to children all over the world.

"Paul would have loved what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a senior official in the sport stated.

Never Forgotten: A Lasting Presence

Historic matches of their son's matches via the internet help his parents stay "in touch with his memory".

"I can access it and I can watch Paul at any moment," Kristina says. "It's a comfort!"

"We are happy to speak about Paul," she adds. "At first it was sad, but I'd rather somebody mention him than him not be recalled."

While he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have gone on to lift snooker's ultimate trophy is ingrained in the sport's folklore.

The Masters, the competition with which he is most associated, begins later this month. The winner will lift the trophy named in his honor.

But for all his accomplishments, a generation after his death it is Paul Hunter's spirit, as much his spectacular skill with a cue, that will ensure he is never forgotten.