'He was a joy': Honoring the sport's lost great a score of years on.

Everything the Leeds-born talent ever wanted to do was compete on the baize.

A sporting bug, sparked at the age of three with the help of a small snooker set on his home's central table in Leeds, would lead to a pro playing days that saw him win half a dozen major wins in a six-year span.

This year marks 20 years since the popular Hunter succumbed to cancer, just days before to his twenty-eighth birthday.

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

'The game was his life': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a lifetime Paul would become a professional snooker player," Hunter's mum recalls.

"Yet he just adored it."

His dad recounts how his son "cared little for anything else" other than snooker as a child.

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

After persistently asking his dad to take him to a nearby hall to play on professional-standard tables at the age of eight, the aspiring talent made the jump from miniature games with great skill.

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

Quick Success: The Path to Glory

With his family's urging to do his homework often being ignored as the game dominated, his parents took the "gamble" of taking Hunter out of school at the mid-teens to fully dedicate himself to forging a career in the game.

It was a resounding success. Within five years, their still-teenage son had won his maior professional trophy, the late-nineties Welsh championship.

Considered one of snooker's most difficult competitions to win because of the involvement of exclusively the best, Hunter was victorious on three occasions, in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

'A Cheeky Charm': The Man Behind the Cue

But for all his triumphs in the sport, away from the game Hunter's down-to-earth charisma never deserted him.

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

"Upon meeting him you'd take to him," Kristina adds. "He brought joy. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's wife Lindsey, with whom he had a daughter, describes him as an "incredible, lively, and kind spirit" who was "funny, kind" and "never the first to depart from the party".

With his easy charm, youthful appearance and straight-talking media manner, not to mention his prodigious ability, Hunter quickly became snooker's pin-up for the new millennium.

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

Facing Adversity: A Fight Against Cancer

In 2005, a year that should have been the zenith of his talent, Hunter was told he had cancer and would later undergo aggressive treatment.

Multiple accounts from across the professional tour attest to the man's extraordinary commitment to honor obligations to public appearances and promotional work, all while enduring treatment.

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter played on through the illness and received a tumultuous reception at The Crucible Theatre when he turned out for the World Championships that year.

When he died in autumn 2006, snooker's tight community lost one of its best-loved members.

"It's awful," Kristina says. "I wouldn't wish any mum and dad to suffer such a loss."

An Enduring Legacy: The Paul Hunter Foundation

Hunter's true legacy would be felt not in palaces and castles but in local sports centers across the UK.

The Paul Hunter Foundation, set up before his death, would provide free snooker sessions to youths all over the country.

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

"The aim remained for a platform to help provide a positive outlet," one coach said.

The Foundation helped lay the groundwork for a significant coaching programme, which has extended 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.

Never Forgotten: Two Decades On

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

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

"We like to reminisce about Paul," she adds. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be spoken of."

While he never won the World Championship, the common opinion that Hunter would have secured snooker's top honor is a part of the sport's legend.

The Masters, the competition with which he is forever linked, begins later this month. The winner will lift the trophy named in his honor.

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