Stephen Hendry has opened up on his pre-match superstitions - including why he has never changed his £40 cue.

In the latest extract from his explosive autobiography, Me and the Table, exclusively serialised in the Mirror, Hendry discusses some of the intricacies that led to him becoming a seven-time world champion.

Hendry had perhaps the most successful of any career on the baize, his name cemented along with other greats such as Alex Higgins, Steve Davies and Ronnie O'Sullivan.

And here's the story behind the piece of wood that served him so well...

A young Stephen Hendry at the Crucible (
Image:
Allsport)
Hendry has written an explosive autobiography (
Image:
Adam Gerrard/Daily Mirror)

"In all the years I’ve been playing I’ve never considered changing my cue. It was the first cue I ever bought, aged 13, picked from a cabinet in a Dunfermline snooker centre just because I liked the Rex Williams signature on it.

"I saved £40 to buy it. It’s a cheap bit of wood and it’s been the butt of other players’ jokes for ages. Alex Higgins said it was ‘only good for holdin’ up f*g tomatoes!’

"But I insist on sticking with it. And I’ve won a lot of silverware, including seven World Championship trophies, with it. It’s a one-piece which I carry in a wooden, leather-bound case that’s much more expensive than the cue it houses.

"But in 2003, at Glasgow airport after a flight from Bangkok, it emerges through the rubber flaps on the carousel and even at twenty yards I can see that both case and cue are broken. Snapped almost clean in two, the whole thing now resembling some form of shepherd’s crook. The cue comes to where I’m standing, and I pick it up, the broken end dangling down forlornly.

"I could weep. Instead, I laugh.

Hendry plays a shot at the World Championships (
Image:
PA)

"‘Well,’ I say to my stunned-looking friend John, ‘that’s my career over.’

"John can barely speak. He knows I’ve had this cue for as long as I’ve been playing professionally and beyond. He knows it was only cheap and not even straight. And, like me, he knows what it symbolises – perhaps the most successful career in the history of snooker. It’s odd that it’s happened now, when doubts have crept into my mind about the quality of my game.

"I phone Lawrie Annandale, my friend from Fife and the only man I’ve ever truster fit new tips to my cue. Lawrie doesn’t pull punches. After examining the cue he delivers his verdict.

"‘It’s a s***e cue, Stephen,’ he says. ‘If I replace this bit with a nice piece of wood the whole thing is gonna be unbalanced.’

"I’m devastated, but there is nothing anyone can do."

(
Image:
Publicity Picture)