'Paul was fun': Reflecting on the sport's lost great a score of years on.

All the Leeds-born talent always wished to do was play snooker.

A love for the game, developed at the tender age of three with the help of a small snooker set on his parents' coffee table in the city of Leeds, would culminate in a pro playing days that saw him win six significant titles in half a dozen years.

The present year marks a score of years since the beloved Hunter passed away from cancer, just days before to his twenty-eighth birthday.

But in spite of the tragic departure of a generational talent that went beyond the game he loved, his legacy and impact on the game and those who followed his career persist as powerful today.

'The game was his life': A Childhood Obsession

"We'd never have known in a million years Paul would become a career sportsman," Hunter's mum says.

"Yet he just adored it."

His dad recounts how his son "showed no interest in anything else" besides snooker as a youth.

"His dedication was constant," he says. "He practiced every night after school."

After successfully badgering his dad to take him to a local club to play on full-size tables at the age of eight, the aspiring talent made the leap from miniature games with great skill.

His raw skill would be nurtured by the snooker legend Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, at a now former establishment in the north Leeds suburb of Yeadon.

Metoric Ascent: The Path to Glory

With his mother and father's requests to do his homework often being ignored as practice took priority, his parents took the "risk" of taking Hunter out of school at the age of 14 to fully focus on carving out a career in the game.

It paid off in spades. Within a short period, their adolescent had won his first ranking title, the 1998 Welsh Open.

Considered one of snooker's toughest events to win because of the lineup featuring elite players only, Hunter triumphed on three occasions, in consecutive years.

'A Cheeky Charm': A Legacy of Character

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

"He was incredibly composed did Paul," Alan says. "He got on with everybody."

"If you met him you'd take to him," Kristina continues. "He brought joy. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's widow Lindsey, with whom he had daughter Evie, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "funny, kind" and "typically the final guest at the party".

With his natural likability, boyish good looks and honest interview style, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's poster boy for the modern era.

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

Courage in Crisis: A Fight Against Cancer

In the mid-2000s, a year that should have signaled the zenith of his talent, Hunter was found to have cancer and would later undergo cancer therapy.

Multiple accounts from across the professional tour attest to the man's extraordinary dedication to fulfill commitments to public appearances and promotional work, all while enduring treatment.

Despite difficult symptoms, Hunter played on through the illness and received a rapturous applause at The World Championship arena when he played at the World Championships that year.

When he passed away in October 2006, snooker's close-knit fraternity lost one of its cherished personalities.

"It is tragic," Kristina says. "I wouldn't wish any mum and dad to suffer such a loss."

A Lasting Impact: The Paul Hunter Foundation

Hunter's true impact would be felt not in palaces and castles but in snooker halls and clubs across the UK.

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

The initiative was so successful that, according to reports, issues with young people in some areas plummeted.

"The aim remained for a platform to help offer a constructive activity," one organizer said.

The Foundation helped pave the way for a significant coaching programme, which has extended playing opportunities to children internationally.

"He would have embraced what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a leading figure in the sport stated.

Never Forgotten: A Lasting Presence

Historic matches of their son's matches online help his parents stay "in touch with his memory".

"I can access it and I can watch Paul at any moment," Kristina says. "It's marvellous!"

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she concludes. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be recalled."

While he never won the World Championship, the highly probable notion that Hunter would have gone on to lift snooker's ultimate trophy is a part of the sport's history.

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

But for all his achievements, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's personality, as much his brilliant talent on the table, that will ensure he is forever celebrated.