'Paul was fun': Reflecting on the sport's departed star a score of years on.

Everything the young snooker player always wished to do was practice the game.

A sporting bug, developed at the very young age of three with the help of a miniature snooker set on his home's central table in Leeds, would culminate in a life on the tour that saw him claim six significant titles in a six-year span.

This year marks 20 years since the popular Hunter succumbed to cancer, just days before to his 28th birthday.

But despite the loss of a once-in-a-generation player that rose above the pastime he cherished, his enduring mark on snooker and those who knew him remain as powerful today.

'He just loved it': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a million years our son would become a professional snooker player," Kristina Hunter says.

"Yet he just adored it."

Hunter's father recounts how his son "cared little for anything else" besides snooker as a child.

"He was relentless," he says. "He would play every night after school."

After persistently asking his dad to take him to a local club to play on professional-standard tables at the age of eight, the young Hunter made the transition from table top snooker with great skill.

His natural ability would be coached by the former world title holder Joe Johnson, from neighbouring Bradford, at a now defunct club in the north Leeds suburb of Yeadon.

Quick Success: A Star is Born

With his parents' pleas 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 carving out a career in the game.

It proved a masterstroke. Within a short period, their still-teenage son 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 elite players only, Hunter was victorious three times, in consecutive years.

'Paul was fun': A Legacy of Character

But for all his success on the table, away from the game Hunter's approachable nature never deserted him.

"He had a great temperament did Paul," Alan says. "He got on with everybody."

"If you met him you'd like him," Kristina states. "He was enjoyable. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's wife Lindsey, with whom he had daughter Evie, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "funny, kind" and "typically the final guest at the party".

With his natural likability, boyish good looks and straight-talking media manner, not to mention his prodigious ability, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new 21st Century.

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

Courage in Crisis: Illness and Resilience

In 2005, a year that should have signaled the height of his career, Hunter was diagnosed with cancer and would later undergo aggressive treatment.

Multiple accounts from across the professional tour attest to the man's extraordinary dedication to fulfill commitments to charity matches, tournaments, and media duties, all while undergoing treatment.

Despite harsh reactions, Hunter kept playing through the illness and received a standing ovation at The Crucible Theatre when he competed in the World Championships that year.

When he died in autumn 2006, snooker's close-knit fraternity lost one of its most popular brothers.

"The pain is immense," Kristina says. "It is a terrible thing for any mum and dad to go through that pain."

A Foundation for the Future: The Paul Hunter Foundation

Hunter's true legacy 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 free snooker sessions to young people all over the country.

The program was so successful that, according to reports, issues with young people in some areas plummeted.

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

The Foundation helped establish the basis for a significant coaching programme, which has provided playing opportunities to children all over the world.

"It would have thrilled him what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a chairman 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 anytime," Kristina says. "It's wonderful!"

"We are happy to speak about Paul," she adds. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody remember him than him not be recalled."

Although he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have gone on to lift snooker's top honor is a part of the sport's folklore.

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 successes, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's character, as much his dazzling snooker ability, that will ensure he is forever celebrated.