From the club where it all began to the towns he trudged through on his meandering 20-year journey to the summit of snooker, the reverberations of Stuart Bingham’s memorable victory in the World Championship final were being felt this week.
Back in Essex, at the Basildon Snooker Club, Joe Lazarus, his old coach of nearly two decades, recalled watching the 14-year-old Bingham learn the game.
And in Prestatyn, the council jobsworths cried foul at Bingham’s quip that his Crucible victory made up for all the dreary qualifying rounds in north Wales. The mayor and one other councillor — who suggested Bingham should donate half his £300,000 winnings to the town for “slagging it off” — were about the only two people with even a passing awareness of snooker who were not delighted for the 38-year-old, the oldest first-time champion since the 1940s.
Even Shaun Murphy, the initial favourite and 18-15 loser of the epic final in Sheffield, could not have been more delighted for his friend.
Before the final, Bingham had spoken of capitalising on his one opportunity. Now the world No. 2 has bigger ideas. “I’m going to beat Stephen Hendry’s record,” he joked. Only another seven titles to go then.
“You want to turn pro, be world champion and world No. 1 and maybe I was a journeymen for 10 to 15 years. The thoughts of doing something else were there, but how much I love the game, I always practise.
“It’s unbelievable. I’ve always had the thought that you get out what you put in. Twenty years of blood, sweat and tears and this is the moment that is going to change my life forever.”
It is fair to say that Lazarus, Bingham’s coach until five years ago, did not originally earmark him for greatness. The 74-year-old, who was in Sheffield to celebrate with his former pupil, told The Daily Telegraph: “He was all right. I don’t know. You’ve got to realise you’re talking about 30 years ago.
“I coached quite a lot of people. I didn’t think he could play as well as he has the last few weeks. I’ve always known he was good, but not to be world champion, let’s put it that way.”
Lazarus was not the only one who was surprised. Bingham did not win a ranking tournament until the Australian Open in 2011. Before that quarter-final his opponent, Mark Allen, said that Bingham did not have the nerve to win. Bingham duly took the title. “Thanks to Mark — he said I have no bottle and since then things have changed,” was Bingham’s retort.
Even as he progressed through the Crucible rounds, knocking out former champions Graeme Dott and Ronnie O’Sullivan, many did not back him to make it past Judd Trump. The Twitter ‘trolls’ were out in force. “I had a few people saying, ‘You won’t get any further, you’re going to lose to Judd’, and I reacted, stupidly. All the people cheering for Ronnie, for Judd and for Shaun gets me going.”
Many were dumbstruck by how he had turned himself from journeyman to giant-killer in a few years.
Marriage to Michelle, with whom he has a three-year-old son, Shae, has helped him to mature. It only seemed fair that his first promise with the prize-money was to replace her Vauxhall Astra with something more flash. “She’s got an A4 list,” he said with a smile.
His long-time manager, Gary Purkiss, is also due some of the winnings. “I’ll probably have to sort my manager out a watch. Every time I win a tournament I buy myself a watch so I think it’s his turn.”
Bingham and Lazarus went their separate ways. Bingham now plays at Rayleigh Lanes snooker club, and works under the tutelage of Steve Feeney, something of a radical in coaching terms. Feeney has developed something called ‘Sight Right’. In essence, it helps players to cue straight.
“Knowing Stuart, I always knew I could help him become world champion, because he was such a talent,” the 54-year-old says. “But he was off-line, which is a significant issue in cue sports.”
The technology, which has also been adopted by golfers including Colin Montgomerie and Darren Clarke, has paid dividends.
Feeney recalls promising Bingham’s mother, Maureen, that he could make her son world champion. “She’s a very lucky lady now,” he told me. “Stuart is Mr Snooker. He absolutely, totally and utterly loves it.”
Bingham also speaks of the influence of something even more zany: Zing Up. Apparently, this brain-training technique has been pivotal in improving the sort of concentration needed for a best-of-35-frame epic.
And then in a promotional event before the tournament began, he picked up a cold from last year’s champion, Mark Selby, and also managed to catch his knack for winning against the odds.
Bingham’s victory has echoes of Joe Johnson, the surprise winner in 1986, beating Steve Davis in the final. “There are a lot of parallels with the year I won it,” Johnson says. “I had just got in the top 16 and I wasn’t tipped to win anything, let alone the World Championship.
“Stuart was genuinely unknown to a lot of what I would call sports fan or the general public. This will change his life. There will have been millions watching. I went from being a ‘nobody’ to a face everyone recognised.”
Now, having fulfilled his life’s ambition and tasted success at last, Bingham wants more. “I’m not sure how far I am behind Mark [Selby], but of course being No. 1 is the target. If I can win the championship, everything is the target. I’ve got the Crucible curse for next year, I’m not looking forward to that next year already, but it’s going to be a great year.”
— The Daily Telegraph