I’m a seven-time world snooker champion but I haven’t been the best dad – I made sacrifices to get to the top
STEPHEN HENDRY has revealed that his quest to become king of snooker made him not the best dad.
The 55-year-old ‘King of the Crucible’ is one of the most successful players in the history of the sport.
The Scot won his first World Snooker Championship in 1990 aged 21 years and 106 days to become the youngest ever champ and went on to add six more to his collection.
Hendry has also lifted the Masters six times and the UK Championship five times, giving him a total of 18 Triple Crown tournament wins, a figure that only Ronnie O’Sullivan has surpassed.
However, during an appearance on the The Tommy Tiernan Show in Ireland over the weekend, the icon opened up about the brutality of “casualties in terms of getting to be the best”.
Hendry was asked about his family and if he had any children, to which he explained that he had two sons.
He then said: “They are fine. They live in Scotland.
“I’m divorced so they live in Scotland, I live down south now in England.”
Host Tiernan then asked: “Are you okay with the type of dad that you are?”
That led to Hendry replying: “No, I probably haven’t been the best because in sport I think you make sacrifices to get to the top.
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“Family and relationships can be difficult and can be sacrificed because I was all about being the best in snooker and snooker was all that mattered.
“So that makes you a very selfish person and I think it takes that sort of special person to get to the top in an individual sport.
“When you look at most top sportsmen who have dominated sports, most of them pretty much all are divorced or have been divorced.”
Hendry previously revealed how he met first wife Amanda Tart at a Pontins holiday camp when he was just 16.
They tied the knot in 1995 and had two sons together, Blaine in 1996 and Carter in 2004.
Hendry broke up with Amanda in 2014 after 19 years of marriage.
He then got involved in a relationship with the then 26-year-old children’s entertainer and actress Lauren Thundow.
n his autobiography Me and The Table, Hendry revealed he met Lauren at a snooker event where she was selling merchandise.
He also shared the moment he told his ex-wife he was leaving her.
He wrote: “Driving back from a shopping trip, my wife Mandy asks me what’s wrong.
“She assumes it’s money-related. I tell her it isn’t.
“Then she tells me to stop the car, saying that we’re not going an inch further until I tell her what’s going on.
“So I do. I tell her that I have feelings for someone else. She is shocked and devastated.”
Hendry handed Amanda their £1.2million sprawling estate in Auchterarder, Perthshire, as part of their divorce settlement.
