The Joy of Six: sporting genius

Stephen Hendry is not renowned for his effusion – if he praises something for being mediocre, you know to pay it careful attention. So hearing his rhapsodic reverence for Ronnie O’Sullivan is a moving thrill almost as great as watching the man himself. “He makes the game look so easy,” the seven-times world champion said of the seven-times world champion. “When it’s not easy at all.”

Effortlessness is not an essential characteristic of genius – Hendry is one too, yet made playing snooker look harder than a diamond with a flick knife smoking an Embassy No 1 while spitting through its teeth. But it is one sign: the ability to differentiate from everyone else who’s ever done something, by making it seem the most natural thing in the world – Whitney singing, say, or Ronnie razzing out a five-minute, eight-second 147 – universal first-name terms being another indicator of unusual luminosity.

Nor is it just Hendry who speaks of Ronnie in such terms. In theory, “The Most Naturally Talented Player Ever To Pick Up A Cue” (TMNTPETPUAC) is too mealy-mouthed to become nickname or cliche, yet Ronnie made it so because his inspirational separateness needs noting over and over again. He happens to be a snooker player, but in a sense it barely matters while, of course, mattering absolutely, because that feeling of watching him – of import, of uniqueness, of transcendence, speaking to the world but also directly to us, personally – glorifies our species and caresses our soul.

In his younger days he was principally about the pyrotechnics, ripping out runs and blazing home long pots – consider his 128 in the 1996 Masters, or the above-mentioned maxi that came a year later – stamping about the genius/madness precipice and exuding