Top players no better than me, says Stephen Hendry

Hendry struggled to find his golden touch this week in Telford Seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry believes the current crop of top players have not surpassed anything he did in his heyday. Hendry, who lost to Mark Williams in this week's UK Championships, has not won a tournament since 2005. "There's no-one playing a standard that's higher than the standard I played when I won tournaments," Hendry told BBC Radio Scotland. "There is more players playing it and that makes it hard to win tournaments." Hendry enjoyed near-dominance between 1989 and 1999, during which time he won five UK Championships, six Masters events and seven World Championships. And, speaking on Sports Weekly, he added: "The actual standard of the top players is not something that I never achieved, and that's the frustrating thing because if I was looking and playing and thinking, 'these guys are too good for me' then I would probably think about quitting because the enjoyment for me is the chance of maybe winning or competing. "But the fact is nobody's playing snooker that I didn't play and that's the thing that annoys me the most. When you're used to so much success and then you go through a barren period, it's hard. If I hadn't had so much success, this would be easier to take

Stephen Hendry "I still love competing. I'm not having the form because when you keep getting beat in the second and third round, it dents your confidence. The only way you can get confidence is by winning and, unfortunately, the only way you win is by being confident. "The frustration for me is that I'm playing two or three frames where I'm back to my best then I'll slip back and play a bad shot and then it's tended to frustrate me and linger in my head for two or three frames. Those things happen when you're not 100% confident in your game. "I was 8-7 down to Jimmy White in the first round and then I played two good frames at the end. In my last frame, I played a long red and just cleared up in one visit and it was like being back in the 90s and you think, 'why can't I do that the whole match?'. "It's very frustrating when you know that that form can be there but it's not coming out." Now ranked 13th, Hendry feels his earlier successes have made recent disappointments especially painful. "In the late 80s and early 90s, I took success for granted, winning four or five tournaments a year," he said. "I just expected to win them. "When you're used to so much success and then you go through a barren period, it's hard. "If I hadn't had so much success, this would be easier to take."



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