'Paul was fun': Reflecting on the game's departed star two decades on.

All Paul Hunter ever wanted to do was play snooker.

A love for the game, developed at the very young age of three with the help of a small snooker set on his home's central table in his Leeds home, would result in a pro playing days that saw him secure half a dozen major wins in six years.

This year marks 20 years since the beloved Hunter passed away from cancer, just days before to his 28th birthday.

But in spite of the passing of a phenomenal skill that rose above the sport he adored, his influence and memory on the game and those who followed his career endure as strong as ever.

'His passion was clear': A Childhood Obsession

"We could not have predicted in a million years Paul would become a career sportsman," Kristina Hunter says.

"Yet he just adored it."

Alan Hunter remembers how his son "cared little for anything else" besides snooker as a youth.

"He never stopped," he says. "He competed every night after school."

After repeatedly pleading with his dad to take him to a community venue to play on full-size tables at the age of eight, the budding player made the transition from home play with remarkable ease.

His raw skill would be developed by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, at a now former establishment in the Leeds district of Yeadon.

Metoric Ascent: From Teenager to Champion

With his parents' pleas to do his homework increasingly falling on deaf ears as practice took priority, his parents took the "gamble" of taking Hunter out of school at the age of 14 to fully focus on building a career in the game.

It proved a masterstroke. Within half a decade, their adolescent 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 three times, in the early 2000s.

'A Gracious Competitor': The Man Behind the Cue

But for all his success on the table, away from the game Hunter's approachable nature never deserted him.

"He had a great temperament did Paul," Alan says. "He got on with everybody."

"If you met him you'd like him," Kristina adds. "He was enjoyable. He'd make you comfortable."

Hunter's widow Lindsey, with whom he had a daughter, 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 honest interview style, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new millennium.

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

Courage in Crisis: His Final Years

In that year, a year that should have been the height of his career, Hunter was diagnosed with cancer and would later undergo cancer therapy.

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

Despite difficult symptoms, Hunter kept playing through the illness and received a rapturous applause at The World Championship arena when he turned out for the World Championships that year.

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

"It's awful," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to lose a child."

A Lasting Impact: Inspiring Youth

Hunter's true legacy would be felt not in palaces and castles but in local sports centers across the UK.

The charity in his name, set up before his death, would provide no-cost coaching to young people all over the country.

The program was so successful that, according to reports, local youth crime rates in some areas dropped significantly.

"The goal was for a program to help offer a constructive activity," one organizer said.

The Foundation helped establish the basis for a major coaching programme, which has provided playing opportunities to children internationally.

"It would have thrilled him what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a chairman in the sport stated.

Always Remembered: 20 Years Later

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

"I can watch it and I can watch Paul anytime," Kristina says. "It's a comfort!"

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she concludes. "Initially it was painful, but I'd rather somebody mention him than him not be spoken of."

Although he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have secured snooker's greatest prize is etched into the sport's folklore.

The Masters, the competition with which he is most synonymous, commences later this month. The winner will lift the Paul Hunter Trophy.

But for all his successes, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's spirit, as much his brilliant talent on the table, that will ensure he is never forgotten.