'He was a joy': Reflecting on the game's lost great a score of years on.

All the Leeds-born talent always wished to do was play snooker.

A competitive passion, caught at the very young age of three with the help of a miniature snooker set on his parents' coffee table in Leeds, would culminate in a professional career that saw him win half a dozen major wins in six years.

The present year marks two decades since the popular Hunter succumbed to cancer, days short to his twenty-eighth birthday.

But despite the passing of a phenomenal skill that transcended the pastime he cherished, his influence and memory on snooker and those who followed his career remain as powerful today.

'He just loved it': Early Beginnings

"We'd never have known in a million years the boy would become a pro on the circuit," his mother says.

"But he just adored it."

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

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

After persistently asking his dad to take him to a community venue to play on professional-standard tables at the age of eight, the budding player made the jump from home play with great skill.

His raw skill would be nurtured by the 1986 World Champion Joe Johnson, from the adjacent city, 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 regularly going unheeded as practice took priority, his parents took the "risk" of taking Hunter out of school at the mid-teens to fully dedicate himself to building a career in the game.

It proved a masterstroke. Within five years, their still-teenage son had won his maior professional trophy, the Welsh Open of 1998.

Considered one of snooker's hardest tournaments to win because of the presence of only the top competitors, Hunter won three times, in consecutive years.

'Paul was fun': A Legacy of Character

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

"His demeanor was excellent did Paul," Alan says. "He connected with everybody."

"When encountering him you'd like him," Kristina states. "He was enjoyable. He'd make you relaxed."

Hunter's partner Lindsey, with whom he had daughter Evie, describes him as an "wonderful, youthful, and fun personality" who was "humorous, caring" and "typically the final guest at the party".

With his effortless appeal, youthful appearance and candid way with the press, not to mention his considerable talent, Hunter quickly became snooker's leading figure for the new millennium.

No wonder then, that he was nicknamed 'The Beckham of the Baize'.

Courage in Crisis: A Fight Against Cancer

In the mid-2000s, a year that should have signaled the peak of his powers, Hunter was told he had cancer and would later undergo aggressive treatment.

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

Despite gruelling side effects, Hunter kept playing through the illness and received a standing ovation at The World Championship arena when he competed in the World Championships that year.

When he succumbed in October 2006, snooker's family-like circuit lost one of its cherished personalities.

"It's awful," Kristina says. "No parent should experience any mum and dad to lose a child."

An Enduring Legacy: Giving Back

Hunter's true contribution would be felt not in high society but in local sports centers across the UK.

The Paul Hunter Foundation, set up before his death, would provide accessible training to young people all over the country.

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

"The goal was for a scheme to help offer a constructive activity," one organizer said.

The Foundation helped pave the way for a huge coaching programme, which has extended playing opportunities to children globally.

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

Forever in Memory: 20 Years Later

Classic footage of their son's matches on YouTube help his parents stay "in touch with his memory".

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

"We like to reminisce about Paul," she continues. "Before it would be tears, but I'd rather somebody talk than him not be mentioned at all."

Although he never won the World Championship, the widespread belief that Hunter would have secured snooker's ultimate trophy is ingrained in the sport's history.

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

But for all his successes, 20 years after his death it is Paul Hunter's character, as much his dazzling snooker ability, that will ensure he is never forgotten.