By Elliott West
Introduction
Alex Higgins was a streak of brilliance who lit up the snooker circuit for many years but by the time the calendar had flipped to 1989, the Irishman was a shadow of his former self. Ravaged by years of controversy and a life of excess, Alex came to the Benson and Hedges Irish Masters in 1989 at Goffs, limping and on crutches, having just sustained a broken ankle in an accident, sustained after falling out of a first-floor window. Playing with a plaster cast under his trousers, it seemed that this Irish maverick had no chance against an in-form Stephen Hendry. Unrecognisable from the man who had held his baby daughter aloft at the Crucible in 1982 after winning the World Championship.
The Final
Goffs like the Wembley Conference Centre, had an amazing atmosphere, drawing the crowd in the drama and suspense of snooker play. In the final, the home audience was largely supporting Alex, producing a deafening chant every time he played well in the match. A reverberation that was common whenever Alex Higgins or Jimmy White played.
This was a final of nip and tuck with both players sharing the spoil of frames. On paper, this should have been a Hendry victory but Higgins mustered up his many years of experience and played a game that was reminiscent of his days at the Jampot snooker club in Belfast. In the end, it came down to a deciding frame. Hendry missed the penultimate black and with Alex just needing a colour, he potted a long yellow down the cushion, slipping the ball into the pocket just past the black that Hendry had previously missed. Alex then potted the green but missed the brown. However, the green was enough to win the match, 9-8, 67 points to 21. The crowd jumped to their feet and an exhausted Alex Higgins slumped back down into his chair. No sooner had he sat down, than a crowd surrounded him and beckoned to shake his hand and pat his back. Presented with the trophy, a jubilant Alex kissed his girlfriend, Siobhan Kidd and savoured the moment.
The Aftermath
Sadly this was Alex’s last hurrah and from then on, this genius of a player became his own worst enemy. Fines and fallouts with the WPBSA ensued and a long battle with throat cancer after years of heavy smoking. By the end of his life, Higgins had ironically been given the all-clear for cancer but multiple chemotherapy sessions had destroyed his teeth and despite friends and players donating to a fund to help him, Higgins chose to take the path of starvation and ended up passing away from malnutrition in 2010. His last appearance at a Legends event, saw him playing Cliff Thorburn. Alex, skeletal and weak, played well in patches but every member of that auditorium left the match with a tear in their eye. Alex was a genius but in the end, his demons won the day.
