'Paul was fun': Remembering the game's departed star a score of years on.

Everything the Leeds-born talent truly desired to do was practice the game.

A sporting bug, sparked at the tender age of three with the help of a miniature snooker set on his family's living room table in Leeds, would result in a professional career that saw him win half a dozen major wins in a six-year span.

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

But notwithstanding the loss of a generational talent that went beyond the sport he adored, his influence and memory on the game and those who followed his career endure as strong as ever.

'His passion was clear': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a million years the boy would become a professional snooker player," his mother says.

"But he just loved it."

Hunter's father recalls how his son "cared little for anything else" other than snooker as a youth.

"He never stopped," he says. "He practiced every night after school."

After persistently asking his dad to take him to a nearby hall to play on regulation tables at the age of eight, the young Hunter made the jump from table top snooker with great skill.

His mercurial talent would be coached by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from nearby Bradford, at a now defunct club in the area of Yeadon.

Quick Success: A Star is Born

With his mother and father's requests to do his homework regularly going unheeded as training came first, his parents took the "risk" of taking Hunter out of school at the fourteen years old to fully concentrate on carving out a career in the game.

It proved a masterstroke. Within five years, their young son had won his initial major win, the late-nineties Welsh championship.

Considered one of snooker's hardest tournaments to win because of the involvement of only the top competitors, Hunter won a trio of times, in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

'Paul was fun': His Enduring Personality

But for all his achievements in competition, away from the game Hunter's approachable nature never deserted him.

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

"Upon meeting him you'd like him," Kristina states. "He brought joy. He'd make you comfortable."

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

With his natural likability, boyish good looks and straight-talking media manner, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was christened 'The Snooker World's Beckham'.

A Brave Battle: His Final Years

In 2005, a year that should have marked the height of his career, Hunter was found to have cancer and would later undergo aggressive treatment.

Multiple stories from across the snooker circuit attest to the man's extraordinary willingness to honor obligations to charity matches, tournaments, and media duties, all while undergoing treatment.

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter kept playing through the illness and received a standing ovation at The World Championship arena when he competed in the World Championships that year.

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

"It is tragic," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to suffer such a loss."

An Enduring Legacy: Inspiring Youth

Hunter's true impact would be felt not in high society but in local sports centers across the UK.

The Paul Hunter Foundation, set up before his death, would provide accessible training to young people all over the country.

The program was so successful that, according to reports, local youth crime rates in some areas plummeted.

"The aim remained for a program to help get kids off the street," one official said.

The Foundation helped lay the groundwork for a huge coaching programme, which has provided playing opportunities to children internationally.

"Paul would have loved what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a senior official in the sport stated.

Forever in Memory: Two Decades On

Archive videos of their son's matches via the internet help his parents stay "in touch with his memory".

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

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she concludes. "Initially it was painful, but I'd rather somebody remember him than him not be recalled."

Although he never won the World Championship, the widespread belief that Hunter would have eventually won snooker's ultimate trophy is a part of the sport's folklore.

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

But for all his achievements, a generation after his death it is Paul Hunter's character, as much his dazzling snooker ability, that will ensure he is always remembered.