'Paul was fun': Remembering the game's lost great a score of years on.

Everything Paul Hunter ever wanted to do was practice the game.

A sporting bug, caught at the tender age of three with the help of a tiny snooker set on his family's living room table in the city of Leeds, would culminate in a professional career that saw him secure half a dozen major wins in half a dozen years.

This year marks two decades since the beloved Hunter succumbed to cancer, just days before to his 28th birthday.

But notwithstanding the loss of a phenomenal skill that rose above the pastime he cherished, his legacy and impact on the game and those who knew him remain as powerful today.

'The game was his life': Early Beginnings

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

"Yet he just was passionate about it."

Alan Hunter remembers how his son "wasn't bothered about anything else" other than snooker as a child.

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

After successfully badgering his dad to take him to a nearby hall to play on regulation tables at the age of eight, the budding player made the transition from miniature games with remarkable ease.

His mercurial talent would be coached by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from neighbouring Bradford, at a now former establishment in the Leeds district of Yeadon.

Quick Success: From Teenager to Champion

With his parents' pleas to do his homework increasingly falling on deaf ears as the game dominated, his parents took the "risk" of taking Hunter out of school at the fourteen years old to fully focus on building a career in the game.

It paid off in spades. Within half a decade, their adolescent had won his maior professional trophy, the late-nineties Welsh championship.

Considered one of snooker's toughest events to win because of the lineup featuring exclusively the best, Hunter won three times, in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

'A Gracious Competitor': His Enduring Personality

But for all his achievements in competition, away from the game Hunter's down-to-earth charisma never deserted him.

"His demeanor was excellent did Paul," Alan says. "He got on with everybody."

"When encountering him you'd enjoy his company," Kristina continues. "He was enjoyable. He'd make you comfortable."

Hunter's widow Lindsey, with whom he had daughter Evie, describes him as an "amazing, young cheeky beautiful soul" who was "funny, kind" and "always the last to leave the party".

With his easy charm, handsome features and straight-talking media manner, not to mention his prodigious ability, Hunter quickly became snooker's pin-up for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was dubbed 'The Beckham of the Baize'.

Courage in Crisis: A Fight Against Cancer

In that year, a year that should have marked the peak of his powers, Hunter was told he had cancer and would later undergo chemotherapy.

Multiple anecdotes from across the sporting world highlight 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 tumultuous reception at The World Championship arena when he competed in the World Championships that year.

When he passed away in the mid-2000s, snooker's close-knit fraternity lost one of its best-loved members.

"It's awful," Kristina says. "No parent should experience 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 high society but in community venues across the UK.

The Paul Hunter Foundation, 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, anti-social behavior in some areas dropped significantly.

"The goal was for a program to help get kids off the street," one coach said.

The Foundation helped pave the way for a major coaching programme, which has provided playing opportunities to children all over the world.

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

Always Remembered: 20 Years Later

Classic footage of their son's matches on YouTube help his parents stay "in touch with his memory".

"I can access it and I can watch Paul whenever I wish," Kristina says. "It's wonderful!"

"We are happy to speak about Paul," she continues. "Initially it was painful, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be spoken of."

Even though he never won the World Championship, the highly probable notion that Hunter would have secured snooker's ultimate trophy is a part of the sport's legend.

The Masters, the competition with which he is forever linked, begins later this month. The winner will lift the Paul Hunter Trophy.

But for all his accomplishments, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's personality, as much his dazzling snooker ability, that will ensure he is never forgotten.