‘I’m not built for snooker – but I’m two wins from huge achievement’ | Other | Sport
Elliot Slessor is one of the top players who hasn’t qualified directly for the Crucible (Image: Getty)
Elliot Slessor admits he isn’t built to be a snooker player. Keeping your emotions in check is seen as vitally important in the game, but it’s something the Tyneside potter has always struggled with.
A five-time ranking event semi-finalist and the world number 21, it would be no surprise to see Slessor join the list of first-time winners on the World Snooker Tour in the near future. The ability is there, but by his own admission, he is missing the final piece of the jigsaw. Simply counting to 10 is neither possible nor desirable for Slessor, though he accepts he still needs to be better at channelling his emotions. “The trouble is, holding it all in is no good for me,” says Slessor, who enters World Championship qualifying on Sunday needing two wins to reach the Crucible.
“I need to get rid of it and move on. A player like Mark Selby is unbelievable at holding it in. But I can’t hold it in; you can see the steam coming out of my ears! I need to get rid of it.
“I’m like a raging bull. I need to get rid of something and then go again. It’s very tough. For my personality, you wouldn’t think I would play snooker because I’m on that tightrope at all times. I wasn’t really built to play snooker.
“I’m like that in life. If someone cuts us up in the car, I lose my temper. In elite sport, you rarely see people who are like that. The ones who let their emotions out aren’t at the top all the time, apart from a few exceptions. I don’t think you can change who are. If you’re going to change it, you have to change in life as a person.
“I just can’t get round to doing it. It’s like going against who you are. It’s just my personality. I follow Newcastle United and if someone loses the ball, I can’t help myself.”
Slessor admits he struggles to keep his emotions in check but is improving (Image: Getty)
That said, Slessor is in a better place than a couple of years ago, making both personal and professional progress up the world rankings since working with esteemed coach Chris Henry.
Previously, Slessor had fallen out of love with the game. He admits: “I was struggling. I’d got to the point where I wasn’t enjoying the game and didn’t want to play anymore.
“I felt my career was stagnating and I wasn’t performing how I wanted to. I didn’t enjoy going to tournaments and, more often than not, I was getting beat early. I just wasn’t doing what I thought I could do.
“I was constantly underperforming, losing games I shouldn’t have and not really doing much. I’d get to the odd quarter-final, the odd semi and then go missing for half the season. It wasn’t what I want I wanted in the game.”
Players outside the world’s top 16 are battling to reach the Crucible (Image: Getty)
Did he ever consider quitting the sport?
“It crosses your mind but I don’t think so,” he says. “Even though I was earning OK, I wasn’t pulling up any trees. Not that I had any divine right; I just thought I should be doing better. It was hard to take because I’d always practised well and grafted. I was just getting nowhere.”
When it came to getting help from Henry, it was actually Slessor’s wife who made the first move. He says: “I thought I could possibly do it myself [without coaching] but it was quite apparent that I couldn’t.
“It wasn’t me who contacted him, it was my wife. She contacted him without me knowing and it went from there. At the time, I was like, ‘What have you done that for?’ I knew he worked with lots of players. He always seemed like a nice, polite fella, but I didn’t really know him. Then we had a conversation and we went for it.
Slessor ran into Zhao Xintong at World Championship qualifying last year (Image: Getty)
“We’ve fixed a lot of the stuff that I wanted fixed. I’m just missing the last piece of the jigsaw. No one’s got divine right but I believe I can win tournaments, I really believe I can do that.”
Slessor has reached the Crucible twice before. Last year, unluckily, he ran into Zhao Xintong in qualifying, losing a high-quality match 10-8. It was arguably the eventual champion’s toughest test of the whole tournament.
“I do and I don’t [like playing at the Crucible],” he says. “The crowd is unbelievable in there. But the venue is so tight. When I first went there, it was a shock to the system.
“I played Yan Bingtao one year. Let’s get it right, we’re both not the slimest of lads. We were trying to squeeze past each other and he knocked a bottle over. There was glass all over the shop!
“But the lads who’ve been to the one-table set-up say you just can’t replicate it anywhere else. It would be amazing to get there.”
