Jack Lisowski has walked a unique and rocky path to lifting his first professional title and hopes his success can inspire anyone facing obstacles of their own.
The 34-year-old created an unforgettable snooker scene on Sunday night as he edged out best friend Judd Trump 9-8 to win the Northern Ireland Open in Belfast.
Having been a professional for 15 years and reaching six ranking finals beforehand, it was the first time the mesmerically talented Jackpot had got his hands on a trophy.
Lisowski has endured plenty of criticism from pundits during his quest for silverware, but he has been through far worse than that away from snooker.
At 16 years old he suffered with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer which meant the teenager was fearing for his life.
He came through the horrible ordeal, taking inspiration from sports stars who had overcome similar, and he hopes he can offer the same hope to anyone else in a difficult situation.
‘When I was sick, I was straight away looking for people that have overcome cancer,’ Lisowski said after his Belfast triumph. ‘It really helped me. I read Lance Armstrong and I remember some of his words and that really affected me in a positive way when I was at the lowest point of my life.
Jack Lisowski describes his cancer ordeal
‘It was like I had a tennis ball in the middle of my chest, a massive lump’ Lisowski told Metro in 2021. ‘I had a biopsy then they cut a lymph node out of my neck, the white blood cell count in my blood was off the scale, which normally indicates a stage four cancer.
‘That was where I was at for about seven days, thinking it was the most serious cancer, then I met my doctor in Cheltenham who pretty much just said: “Look I’m going to cure you.” That was it from there. I just had that mindset from that point, I had to find a way through.
‘The chemo was the worst thing ever. Every two weeks I had to go and for eight months it just broke me down.
‘My whole body was so weak. All my hair, my eyebrows come out, my skin went a different yellowy colour. I’d have a big blast of chemo and I’d look at my veins the next day and they were stained red, all the way up your arm you have a red spider’s web.
‘I think it took about a year until I was feeling strong again.’
‘If anyone can come to my story, being at rock bottom when I was 16, rock bottom this year, and then to have stuck through it and ended up having the greatest sporting moment of my life.
‘It’s life and life’s tough. Things go wrong, they always go wrong for people. I feel like everyone’s always either about to go into a crisis, they’re in a crisis, or they’re just coming out of a crisis.
‘It’s like a constant wave. So sometimes, obviously, when you’re in a crisis, you think, “Oh my God, this is it.” But if someone can see me, I can let them know I was in an absolute crisis many times in my life and here I am today, healthy and now a World Snooker ranking winner.
‘So hopefully, yeah, if I could inspire someone…I’m not trying to be Gandhi or anything, but if I could make someone feel better about themselves, that would be amazing.’
The world number 24 feels his health scare in his teenage years has led to who he is now and how he is as a snooker player, failing to see a match as the matter of life and death that he has actually experienced.
‘That’s probably a bit of my laid-backness. It was never really that important to me,’ he said. ‘It was important to me, but I just didn’t quite have that killer instinct where it’s like life or death to win a snooker game.
‘When you see professional sports, it’s so difficult. Everyone’s trying so hard. But I think maybe that was one of the reasons I am as I am.
‘I get down when I lose, but I never need people to pick me up off the floor. In half an hour, after I have a good sulk, then it’s out of my system. I know not every player’s like that. But yeah, since my dad died, he’s felt a lot more serious.’
Lisowski’s latest traumatic experience came in March when his dad unexpectedly passed away.
He unsurprisingly struggled for focus and fight on the table for some time, but after a shock defeat to little-known Xu Yichen in a qualifier at the start of September, he felt his snooker had reached a nadir and he needed to act.
Jackpot turned to renowned coach Chris Henry and less than two months later he has the need for a trophy cabinet for the first time.
‘Sometimes I guess you’ve got to hit rock bottom to make a change,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t lost that qualifier, I don’t think I’d have bothered going to Bruges and seeing Chris Henry.
‘I was like, something’s got to change, and I know Chris is top coach. But not in my wildest dreams did I think in six, seven weeks he’s going to turn me around from maybe a career low to this magic moment.’
Lisowski’s triumph such a short time after his father died was an immensely emotional experience, one that he did very well to hold himself together for.
The reliably cool customer didn’t love that he lost control of his emotions as he potted the final balls, but his embarrassment is misplaced as the crowd in Belfast and watching on television were beaming for him. Many beaming through tears.
‘I think I just started crying. So embarrassing. I’ve never done that, I’ve never celebrated much,’ he said of his reaction to beating Trump. ‘I’ve never done anything on the table. I was crying. I was cheering.
‘It just brought something out in me. 28 years of playing snooker since I was about six. The moment that I dreamt of finally happened. It just all came out of me. You never know how you’re going to react until it happens, but I didn’t think it was going to be like that.
‘It didn’t feel real. I was thinking it was because of my dad as well. I was thinking so much about my dad.
‘He was almost there with me. It was just one of those moments in life, the last time I felt like that was when I found out he died.
‘It doesn’t feel real. You go numb. I felt like he was with me. It was just mental.’
A beautiful moment but attention will always turn to what is next and can Lisowski now add more trinkets to his new cabinet? Will the floodgates open, as some have predicted?
‘I hope so. Everyone says it’s going to. But I felt how hard it is to win a tournament this week,’ he said.
‘But it’s not like some elusive phoenix that I’m not sure if it exists or not. I’ve done it now and I felt it.’
We all felt it, Jack.