'He brought laughter': Honoring the game's lost great a score of years on.

All Paul Hunter always wished to do was practice the game.

A competitive passion, sparked at the very young age of three with the help of a tiny snooker set on his parents' coffee table in his Leeds home, would lead to a pro playing days that saw him secure six significant titles in a six-year span.

Now marks a score of years since the popular Hunter succumbed to cancer, just days before to his twenty-eighth birthday.

But despite the passing of a once-in-a-generation player that transcended the game he loved, his legacy and impact on the sport and those who followed his career remain as powerful today.

'He just loved it': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a lifetime Paul would become a career sportsman," Kristina Hunter states.

"However he just was passionate about it."

Alan Hunter remembers how his son "cared little for anything else" besides snooker as a young boy.

"He never stopped," he adds. "He competed every night after school."

After successfully badgering 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 leap from miniature games with aplomb.

His mercurial talent would be coached by the former world title holder Joe Johnson, from nearby Bradford, at a now former establishment in the north Leeds suburb of Yeadon.

Quick Success: A Star is Born

With his family's urging to do his homework increasingly falling on deaf ears as the game dominated, his parents took the "chance" of taking Hunter out of school at the fourteen years old to fully dedicate himself to building a career in the game.

It proved a masterstroke. Within a short period, their still-teenage son had won his initial major win, the 1998 Welsh Open.

Considered one of snooker's toughest events to win because of the lineup featuring exclusively the best, Hunter won three times, in 2001, 2002 and 2004.

'Paul was fun': His Enduring Personality

But for all his triumphs in the sport, away from the game Hunter's approachable nature never left him.

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

"When encountering him you'd take to him," Kristina continues. "Paul was fun. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's partner Lindsey, with whom he had a daughter, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "humorous, caring" and "always the last to leave the party".

With his effortless appeal, boyish good looks and candid way with the press, not to mention his immense skill, Hunter quickly became snooker's pin-up for the new 21st Century.

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

Facing Adversity: His Final Years

In the mid-2000s, a year that should have signaled the zenith of his talent, Hunter was found to have cancer and would later undergo cancer therapy.

Multiple accounts from across the snooker circuit speak of the man's extraordinary commitment to honor obligations to exhibitions, events and press interviews, all while undergoing treatment.

Despite harsh reactions, Hunter continued to compete through the illness and received a tumultuous reception at The famous Sheffield venue when he played at the World Championships that year.

When he passed away in October 2006, snooker's family-like circuit lost one of its best-loved members.

"The pain is immense," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to lose a child."

A Lasting Impact: Inspiring Youth

Hunter's true impact would be felt not in high society but in community venues across the UK.

The foundation he inspired, 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 fell sharply.

"The goal was for a program to help offer a constructive activity," one official said.

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

"He would have embraced what we've done with the sport and where it is today," a chairman in the sport stated.

Never Forgotten: 20 Years Later

Archive videos of their son's matches online help his parents stay "close to him".

"I can access it and I can watch Paul whenever I wish," Kristina says. "It's wonderful!"

"We don't mind talking about Paul," she concludes. "At first it was sad, 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 ingrained in the sport's folklore.

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

But for all his accomplishments, two decades after his death it is Paul Hunter's character, as much his spectacular skill with a cue, that will ensure he is never forgotten.