'He brought laughter': Honoring the game's lost great two decades on.
Everything the Leeds-born talent always wished to do was play snooker.
A love for the game, caught at the tender age of three with the help of a small snooker set on his home's central table in Leeds, would lead to a professional career that saw him claim half a dozen major wins in a six-year span.
Now marks 20 years since the popular Hunter succumbed to cancer, mere days prior to his twenty-eighth birthday.
But notwithstanding the passing of a phenomenal skill that rose above the sport he adored, his influence and memory on the game and those who knew him persist as powerful today.
'His passion was clear': Early Beginnings
"It was impossible to foresee in a lifetime the boy would become a career sportsman," Hunter's mum recalls.
"Yet he just adored it."
Alan Hunter recounts how his son "wasn't bothered about anything else" except for snooker as a young boy.
"His dedication was constant," he says. "He would play every night after school."
After successfully badgering his dad to take him to a nearby hall to play on professional-standard tables at the age of eight, the budding player made the jump from table top snooker with remarkable ease.
His mercurial talent would be developed by the former world title holder Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, at a now defunct club in the area of Yeadon.
Metoric Ascent: From Teenager to Champion
With his mother and father's requests to do his homework regularly going unheeded as the game dominated, his parents took the "chance" of taking Hunter out of school at the fourteen years old to fully concentrate on building a career in the game.
It paid off in spades. Within a short period, their adolescent had won his initial major win, the Welsh Open of 1998.
Considered one of snooker's most difficult competitions to win because of the presence of only the top competitors, Hunter was victorious on three occasions, in consecutive years.
'A Gracious Competitor': His Enduring Personality
But for all his achievements in competition, away from the game Hunter's humble charm never deserted him.
"He had a great temperament did Paul," Alan says. "He connected with everybody."
"When encountering him you'd like him," Kristina continues. "Paul was fun. He'd make you feel at ease."
Hunter's wife Lindsey, with whom he had a child, describes him as an "incredible, lively, and kind spirit" who was "witty, generous" and "always the last to leave the party".
With his natural likability, youthful appearance and candid way with the press, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new 21st Century.
No wonder then, that he was christened 'The Beckham of the Baize'.
A Brave Battle: Illness and Resilience
In 2005, a year that should have been the height of his career, Hunter was told he had cancer and would later undergo cancer therapy.
Multiple stories from across the professional tour highlight the man's extraordinary willingness to honor obligations to charity matches, tournaments, and media duties, all while enduring treatment.
Despite difficult symptoms, Hunter continued to compete through the illness and received a rapturous applause at The Crucible Theatre when he played at the World Championships that year.
When he passed away in autumn 2006, snooker's tight community lost one of its cherished personalities.
"It is tragic," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to lose a child."
A Lasting Impact: Inspiring Youth
Hunter's true impact would be felt not in high society but in snooker halls and clubs across the UK.
The Paul Hunter Foundation, set up before his death, would provide free snooker sessions to youths all over the country.
The program was so successful that, according to reports, local youth crime rates in some areas plummeted.
"The idea was for a scheme to help get kids off the street," one official said.
The Foundation helped establish the basis for a major coaching programme, which has extended playing opportunities to children internationally.
"Paul would have loved what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a chairman in the sport stated.
Forever in Memory: 20 Years Later
Historic matches of their son's matches online help his parents stay "in touch with his memory".
"I can bring it up and I can watch Paul whenever I wish," Kristina says. "It's a comfort!"
"We don't mind talking about Paul," she adds. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody mention him than him not be recalled."
While he never won the World Championship, the widespread belief that Hunter would have eventually won snooker's greatest prize is ingrained in the sport's legend.
The Masters, the competition with which he is forever linked, commences later this month. The winner will lift the trophy named in his honor.
But for all his accomplishments, a generation after his death it is Paul Hunter's personality, as much his brilliant talent on the table, that will ensure he is always remembered.
