Snooker: John Higgins predicts Stephen Hendry revival

John Higgins is backing Stephen Hendry to catapult back up the world rankings once he comes to terms with life among snooker’s foot soldiers.

World champion Higgins admits it would have been a confusing scenario if his fellow Scot had failed to qualify for the williamhill.com UK Championship, which begins in York today.

Higgins opens his title defence against Rory McLeod on the opening day. For the first time since he was a teenager, Hendry is having to battle through the preliminary stages of tournaments, paying the price for a decade of steady decline which has seen him fall outside the elite top 16 players on tour.

The 42-year-old beat Northern Ireland’s Gerard Greene three weeks ago to secure a first-round clash with another Scot, Stephen Maguire, at the Barbican Centre as the UK Championship returns to York, following four years in Telford. And Higgins, for one, was relieved to see the seven-time world champion perform when it mattered.

“It wouldn’t seem right if you came to a top event and Stephen wasn’t playing at it,” said Higgins. “You’d think, ‘Where is he? Has he got an illness or something?’. But he’s made it through here and I really do think it could be the making of him.

“His pride obviously must have taken a bit of a dent because he’s fallen outside the top 16, and that’s maybe going to focus him again, to maybe come back to where he should be.

“Maybe it has taken him to fall out of the top 16 to try to get his priorities and his goals right, and who knows, he could come back a stronger player.”