Scots snooker great Stephen Hendry has said he would still be playing professionally if it wasn’t for a wrist condition.
The Edinburgh born potter took the sport to new heights in the 1990s as he won seven World Championships, a record he now jointly shares with Ronnie O’Sullivan, delighting fans with his ultra aggressive style of play. However after his last world title in 1999 he struggled for form, initially retiring from the sport in 2012 at the age of 43 – saying that he was frustrated with his standard of play.
A return in 2020 proved ill-fated and he hung up his cue for good in the summer of 2024 after turning down a two-year tour card saying: “Let’s be honest, I wasn’t pulling up any trees, was I? I was a little bit surprised with how good the standard was, but I’ve just got so many other work commitments, I won’t be able to dedicate enough time to practising. I know the game inside out, I still know all the shots, but unfortunately the body is not performing like my brain wants it to.”
However now Hendry has revealed he would still be playing if it wasn’t for the yips, saying: “If I didn’t have the yips and I could play, I would still play. I can’t go through the ball properly and I can’t wait at the back. There are certain shots I know I can’t pot and they can be the easiest pots in the world or easy positional shots. I hate it. I don’t know where it came from. Some people don’t see it but it’s horrible and that’s why I retired.”
The yips are involuntary wrist spasms that occur most commonly when golfers are trying to putt. However, the yips also can affect people who play other sports where small movements are critical, including snooker, cricket, darts and baseball. It was once thought that the yips were always associated with performance anxiety.
According to research from the Mayo Clinic however, it now appears that some people have the yips due to a neurological condition affecting specific muscles. This condition is known as focal dystonia. Six-time world snooker champion Steve Davis, who now works as a pundit on the BBC alongside Hendry, revealed he had also suffered with the ‘yips’ during his career and said it was difficult to keep under control.