The Masters

Hakuin, Bankei and my own teacher Daizan. Great Zen Masters who have much to teach us. But for once I’m not referring to those sorts of Masters. I’m talking about snooker. Perhaps these Masters have something to teach us too?

This year I went to Alexandra Palace to watch the opening game in the 2024 snooker Masters contest. Not a single person I told appeared to believe that this was a reasonable thing for me to do, and I have been meaning to explain myself ever since!

I only started watching snooker on TV a couple of years ago, when the man who likes to hold my hand introduced me to it. It’s fair to say that I was captivated from the outset. The only thing I knew about snooker was that my grandfather used to spend hours watching it, and everybody thought that was very boring. As a seven-year-old I tended to agree.

It was easy to see that a lot of skill is involved, and that players need to think two, three or even four moves in advance to win. And there was me thinking it was just about potting balls. No, it’s a game of real tactics and precision. During one of the first games I watched I remember the commentator saying that if a player lost concentration for even a split second they could miss anything.

That really resonated. Mindfulness asks us to pay attention, but how often does the mind wander? Before you know it, you’ve reached your destination, got to the end of a film, or missed half of an A-Level English exam because you got lost in a packet of fruit pastilles. (That was unfortunate and only happened once.) We can miss anything at any time because we are so distractable. And when we miss something, we miss the moment. The moment turns into the minute, the day, the week, the year. You get the general idea.

Ronnie O’Sullivan recently released ‘The Edge of Reason’ on Netflix. In it he talks about many things including his struggle with his mental health. But he also explains how he gets into a state of flow when playing. They weren’t his exact words but that’s what he was describing, and I’m sure it’s true for many of the players. Watching someone in their flow state seems like a personal and intimate thing to do, and is fascinating to me.

Snooker, like so many sports, requires total focus. The chatty commentators, who I later found out were the very players that my grandfather had enjoyed watching so much, went on to conclude that the sky is not the limit, the mind is. Again, so true and reminded me of the limitations I place on myself that are total fiction. Seriously, they make Alice in Wonderland seem like a totally logical premise.

So yes, I admire the focus and concentration of the game. Seeing it live was somehow thrilling in a way that I had not anticipated. The players were happy to get close to the crowd and there was an air of entertainment about the whole thing which was admirable given the pressure they were under. It helped that we had fabulous seats and could listen to the BBC commentators on teeny radios that fitted on your ear. I loved going to see Wimbledon, but I probably only understood 70% of what was happening at the time.

At Alexandra Palace I was completely absorbed in the match, and it was one of those rare times that my own view was better than the one on TV. It was also a bonus that not once was there a queue for the ladies’ loo, nor did we have to contend with the great drunk British public. I immediately registered on a fan site and have bagsied my tickets for 2025.