Seven-time snooker world champion Stephen Hendry has opened up on the time he was banned from visiting his girlfriend during his playing days. Hendry, now a BBC pundit at the World Championship, is one of the sport’s greatest-ever players and had a ferocious winning mentality instilled into him.
Hendry, now 59, became the youngest Crucible champion in 1990 – a record that still stands today. From 1992 he won five consecutive world titles and dominated snooker before Ronnie O’Sullivan and the Class of 92 followed in his footsteps. The Scot’s first manager, Ian Doyle, took him under his wing at the age of 16. But the businessman often shared some harsh telling-offs with his client and even banned Hendry from visiting his girlfriend, who later became his wife.
“I often got the hairdryer treatment in the dressing rooms,” Hendry told The Times. “He’d come in and say, ‘You’re f***ing useless, you’ve not practised this week, you’re lazy’.
“In the early days, when I was dating my ex-wife, she lived down south and he said things like, ‘You think you’re going to see her next month? No you’re not’. It was pretty full on. We followed the same mould as Steve [Davis] and [his manager] Barry Hearn. I didn’t socialise with other players. I was there to win.”
Hendry started dating Amanda Tart when he was 16, despite disapproval from the prodigy’s then-manager Doyle, fearing that she would distract him from snooker. They got married in 1995, shortly after his fifth world title and had two children together, before divorcing each other in 2014.
She was left “devastated” after being informed that Hendry had fallen for someone 19 years his junior. Revealing in his 2018 autobiography, he recalled the painful moment he told Amanda that their marriage was over.
“Driving back from a shopping trip, my wife Mandy asks me what’s wrong,” he wrote. “She assumes it’s money-related. I tell her it isn’t.
“Then she tells me to stop the car, saying that we’re not going an inch further until I tell her what’s going on. So I do. I tell her that I have feelings for someone else. She is shocked and devastated.”
Hendry found a new love with actress and performer Lauren Thundrow when he was 45 and she was 26. They have now been together for 11 years after a chance meeting at a snooker event.
“I first met Lauren when she was selling merchandise after a Legends snooker exhibition,” he continued in his memoir. “She’s attractive and we smile at each other, but I think nothing of it. Gradually, we start to say, ‘Hi’, and share a bit of small talk.
“I would never be one to go striding over to any woman who caught my eye – after all, I’m the person who got to know my wife’s parents before I plucked up the courage to talk to her. As time goes on, we chat more often. It’s becoming clear we have a connection.”
