This master of the game learned his craft from Ronnie O’Sullivan.
In the life of nations, the attentive observer, withdrawing for a moment from the clamor of immediate events, may become conscious of witnessing the unfolding of an imperceptible alteration in the disposition of the world itself. Such moments are rare, but however celebrated in their own age, yield to the patient erosions of time. Yet certain places preserve within themselves an enduring spirit that neither prosperity nor adversity can wholly extinguish.
Shanghai is one of those places.
Surveying the broad waters of the Huangpu, one is reminded of the anonymous poet of The Ruin, who, standing amid the remnants of Roman Britain, marveled at those mighty constructions that exclaim, “Wondrous is this stone-wall.” The sensation is much the same when one contemplates the ancient temples of China, and the great cathedrals of Europe. Here, the individual stone acquires a permanence that seems almost to defy mortality itself.
The same principle applies, I have long thought, to snooker.
The inexperienced spectator sees balls disappearing into pockets; the experienced observer perceives patterns, geometries, and possibilities; but the master sees an entire landscape unfolding before him. Alexander Pope remarked that “Order is Heaven’s first law,” and nowhere does the observation appear more applicable than upon the green cloth.
The modern world, impatient by temperament and increasingly unwilling to acknowledge the slow accumulation of excellence, delights in the notion that genius appears suddenly and mysteriously. A single mason did not erect the ancient halls of England; the cathedrals of Europe were not completed within a generation; and the inheritance of wisdom has invariably passed from master to apprentice, from father to son, from teacher to pupil.
Judd Trump at work (photo courtesy BBC)
Not long ago, Ronnie O’Sullivan confessed that Judd Trump had once informed him that he had learned everything he needed to learn from his example. One could scarcely imagine a more moving tribute, for the old English imagination has always concerned itself with questions of inheritance.
The Anglo-Saxons contemplated the inscrutable decrees of fate, they say. Indeed, one is reminded of Chaucer himself, who observed that “out of olde feldes cometh al this newe corn from yeer to yeer.” The sentiment could scarcely be more appropriate. For if O’Sullivan sowed the seed, Trump has undoubtedly gathered the harvest.
Yet Trump has never been content merely to imitate. The pupil has honored the master precisely because he has refused to become his reflection. There remains something of O’Sullivan’s audacity in his game, certainly. Still, there is also something unmistakably his own: a delight in invention, an instinctive understanding of space, and an almost architectural appreciation of order and proportion.
As one who has spent many years contemplating the movements of hockey players across a field, I have often reflected that the decisive quality is almost invariably the organization of space itself. Every pass alters the landscape; every movement changes the geometry of the contest; and every hesitation creates opportunities elsewhere.
That same principle governs snooker. Every red constitutes a territory; every safety exchange resembles a negotiation; every cannon creates new possibilities; and every successful break resembles the harvest gathered after months of labor.
Barry Hawkins was overcome; John Higgins, that stern and honorable guardian of the old Scottish order, was swept aside in a display of astonishing authority; Wu Yize, the reigning world champion and standard-bearer of a rising generation, resisted with admirable composure; and finally, there remained Kyren Wilson, courageous, industrious, and indefatigable to the last.
Shakespeare, whose understanding of fortune has seldom been surpassed, wrote in Julius Caesar that “there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Throughout the contest, Trump appeared to possess an almost unerring instinct for precisely such moments. He advanced when others hesitated, consolidated when others attacked, and perceived opportunities invisible to ordinary eyes.
Photo courtesy Collins
Yet, just as Venice once stood between Europe and the Orient by receiving merchants, scholars, diplomats, adventurers, sailors, and pilgrims from every shore, so too has Shanghai become a meeting place of traditions which, though separated by thousands of miles, have gradually discovered their mutual affinities. Both Britain and China, after all, are ancient civilizations, and if the willow has become the emblem of one and the oak the symbol of the other, each nevertheless draws its strength from roots that extend deep beneath the surface.
Indeed, one is tempted to observe that the rise of Chinese snooker possesses something of the patient labor of the stonemason. Simon Warrack, reflecting upon the restoration of ancient monuments, speaks movingly of the moment when the apprentice ceases to perceive individual stones and begins instead to understand the larger harmony that binds them together into an enduring whole. The observation seems equally applicable here. Zhao Xintong, Wu Yize, Si Jiahui, Xiao Guodong, Zhou Yuelong, and countless others are successive stones in a great and steadily rising edifice whose foundations were laid many years ago. Yet every architect understands that the newest stone invariably rests upon the labor of those who came before.
Did the center of gravity shift eastward? Did the game that once flourished amid the smoke and drizzle of Sheffield, beneath the grey skies, become prosperous beneath Chinese lanterns and among the bustling avenues of Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, and Xi’an? Surely, the dragon has awakened. Zhao Xintong, Wu Yize, Si Jiahui, Zhou Yuelong, and Xiao Guodong have announced the arrival of a new age.
William Butler Yeats, surveying a world transformed by violence and uncertainty, lamented that “the center cannot hold.” Yet snooker presents us with a more curious spectacle. Britain and China, the lion and the dragon, the oak and the willow, now stand not as adversaries but as fellow custodians of a common inheritance.
As the evening shadows lengthened across the Huangpu, and as the lanterns gradually illuminated the gathering darkness, I recall the lines of T. S. Eliot, who wrote that “time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.” There, perhaps, lies the true significance of Trump’s latest triumph. The master had saluted the pupil; the old kingdom had encountered the new; the harvest had been gathered from ancient fields; and an Englishman, having journeyed into the heart of the Middle Kingdom, departed carrying not merely a trophy, but the living inheritance of a game that continues, with every passing generation, to renew itself.
And perhaps that is why the victory seemed to possess a significance greater than the sum of its individual parts, for the contest was between differing conceptions of excellence itself. One side emphasized spontaneity, intuition, and imagination; the other, discipline, repetition, patience, and industry. Yet, the arch depends as much upon the stone that bears the weight as upon the stone that crowns it, and the river requires both its banks.
As Judd Trump stood amid the applause of Shanghai, one question lingered in my mind: had this old game once again revealed its remarkable capacity for renewal?
To me, the answer seemed unmistakable. The pupil had honored the master. And somewhere beyond the glow of the lanterns and the murmuring waters of the Huangpu, history, that patient and inexhaustible chronicler of human endeavor, resumed its work.
WARNING: Profane language is uttered in this video.
