'Paul was fun': Remembering the sport's taken talent two decades on.

All the young snooker player truly desired to do was practice the game.

A competitive passion, caught at the tender age of three with the help of a small snooker set on his home's central table in Leeds, would result in a life on the tour that saw him claim half a dozen major wins in half a dozen years.

Now marks 20 years since the popular Hunter succumbed to cancer, mere days prior to his 28th birthday.

But notwithstanding the loss of a generational talent that transcended the pastime he cherished, his influence and memory on the game and those who knew him endure as powerful today.

'The game was his life': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a million years our son would become a professional snooker player," Kristina Hunter states.

"However he just loved it."

Alan Hunter recalls how his son "wasn't bothered about anything else" except for snooker as a young boy.

"He was relentless," he notes. "He would play every night after school."

After successfully badgering his dad to take him to a nearby hall to play on full-size tables at the age of eight, the aspiring talent made the transition from miniature games with remarkable ease.

His natural ability would be developed by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from nearby Bradford, at a now defunct club in the north Leeds suburb of Yeadon.

Quick Success: From Teenager to Champion

With his mother and father's requests to do his homework regularly going unheeded as the game dominated, his parents took the "chance" of taking Hunter out of school at the mid-teens to fully concentrate on carving out a career in the game.

It paid off in spades. Within a short period, their still-teenage son had won his initial major win, the 1998 Welsh Open.

Considered one of snooker's hardest tournaments to win because of the presence of exclusively the best, Hunter won on three occasions, in the early 2000s.

'A Gracious Competitor': The Man Behind the Cue

But for all his achievements in competition, away from the game Hunter's humble charm never left him.

"His demeanor was excellent did Paul," Alan says. "He got on with everybody."

"If you met him you'd like him," Kristina adds. "He brought joy. He'd make you comfortable."

Hunter's partner Lindsey, with whom he had a child, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "witty, generous" and "never the first to depart from the party".

With his natural likability, handsome features and honest interview style, not to mention his considerable talent, Hunter quickly became snooker's poster boy for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was nicknamed 'A Sporting Icon'.

A Brave Battle: Illness and Resilience

In 2005, a year that should have signaled the zenith of his talent, Hunter was found to have cancer and would later undergo chemotherapy.

Multiple accounts from across the professional tour highlight the man's extraordinary willingness to honor obligations to exhibitions, events and press interviews, all while enduring treatment.

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter continued to compete through the illness and received a standing ovation at The World Championship arena when he turned out for the World Championships that year.

When he succumbed in the mid-2000s, snooker's family-like circuit lost one of its most popular brothers.

"It's awful," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to go through that pain."

A Lasting Impact: The Paul Hunter Foundation

Hunter's true contribution would be felt not in palaces and castles but in community venues across the UK.

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

The program was so successful that, according to reports, anti-social behavior in some areas fell sharply.

"The aim remained for a scheme to help offer a constructive activity," one coach said.

The Foundation helped lay the groundwork for a significant coaching programme, which has provided 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 chairman in the sport stated.

Never Forgotten: Two Decades On

Historic matches of their son's matches via the internet help his parents stay "connected to him".

"I can bring it up and I can watch Paul at any moment," Kristina says. "It's wonderful!"

"We are happy to speak about Paul," she concludes. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be spoken of."

Even though he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have secured snooker's top honor is etched into the sport's folklore.

The Masters, the competition with which he is most associated, begins later this month. The winner will lift the memorial cup.

But for all his successes, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's personality, as much his dazzling snooker ability, that will ensure he is never forgotten.