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Judd Trump caused a sensation this week when, aged just 21, he rocketed into snooker's World Championship final. So who is this new boy wonder?
Judd Trump can measure, precisely, when and how fast he got properly famous. Just over three weeks ago, on 14 April, he opened a Twitter account with the cheery "Hello twitter!!", swiftly followed by "In nandos tucking into half a chicken!!" (he is fond of exclamation marks. And food.) Initially @judd147t, "part time snooker player, full time international playboi!!" [sic] had some 200 followers – respectable, for a normal citizen. Then he went to Sheffield and played his first game in his second World Championship, which, after a wobbly – and duly tweeted – beginning ("Nervy start but gotta take 5-4 powwow!!"), he won, dispatching the title holder, Neil Robertson. The follower count jumped to 3,000. "I was shocked. And then I started publicising it a little bit, and said I'd love to get up to 10,000, or 20,000, and then one day, after, I think, my semi-final" – a game which, by fearlessly going for shots others might avoid ("If in doubt hit it as hard as you can?!!"), he both thrilled his audience and won – "it jumped from like 10,000 to 25,000, and I was really shocked. I overtook all of the rest of the snooker players." By the end of last week, over 51,000 followers were being informed that it was "time to put a dent in the bank balance in london today!!"
For said bank balance has swelled a lot in that time, too. On 3 April, the 21-year-old won the China Open, pocketing £60,000 and gaining his first ranking title; he didn't win the World Championships, but came a close second to three-time world champion John Higgins, pocketing £125,000. In some ways more important than the money, however, was the sense of a blistering new arrival in snooker, warmly welcomed. "Judd's greatest asset is his game terrifies people. Never seen anyone pot so well. Scary," tweeted Ronnie O'Sullivan, the game's last such arrival (who, incidentally, joined the Twitter-sphere on the same day as Trump). "Judd was by far the better player," said Higgins after the game. "He was playing a brand of snooker I've never seen in my life. We've got a new sensation, which is great for the game. It's just a fantastic feeling." Viewing figures peaked in the UK at 6.6 million, the best for the last five years, in no small part due to Trump's bravura showmanship (and boyband haircut); a total of 27.1 million watched the tournament overall. In China, 30 million people watched the semi-final, in which Trump beat Chinese star Ding Junhui. "The Juddernaut is the future," hyperventilated the Daily Mail, "and that future is now."
Although, right now, the future is late. When it finally pulls into the business centre car park on the edges of Romford, Essex, in a white BMW with a flamboyant spoiler, Trump, his childhood friend Ryan, and his manager Django Fung, a Hong Kong-born businessman in natty narrow trousers and velvet-lapelled jacket, are discussing the afternoon's prospective shopping trip. Fung suggests he might not come along; Trump's face falls. "Come with us?" The openness of his face, looking at his manager, the obvious, implicit trust in an elder, make him look very young. All ignore the journalist in the room.
So what was he up to this morning? He is watchful now, the vulnerabilty contained. "Sleepin'." Absently, he strokes the large, fake diamond-studded watch on his wrist. His tight white Gucci T-shirt is pristine, his belt and the obligatory band of striped underwear just so. He is fit, but incredibly skinny, a broomstick topped by an elaborately teased mop of hair. It's all very self-aware; when I mention that the swell in viewing figures seems largely to have been because of him, he says, "Yeah – I had a lot of people tell me that. A lot of younger kids and that – obviously because I'm more at their age and a little bit different to the rest of the snooker players, with my image and stuff." Image? "My whole hairstyle, the way I dress. Older people like to dress older. I dress in more flamboyant, stylish … " Has he always made this degree of effort? "More so now. I used to be quite laid back and that. But obviously the more you're in the public eye, the more you've got to … dress to impress." (There is also the fact that he simply loves to shop. "Love it. Absolutely love it." He can't wait, when the interview is over, to hit Gucci first, then Harrods.)
It's of a piece with the deliberate showmanship of his play – the supposedly impossible shots, the calculated recklessness of his pocketing, which, as he tells it, are a kind of evangelism. "I think I wanted – not to show off, but try and make [snooker] more popular, whereas other players maybe just want to play the game and don't really care about the fans as much. But I always want to go for certain shots that please the crowd, and stuff like that." Partly this is because it's just "a lot easier with them supporting you than with them against you. You enjoy it more." But also "I've just got the mindset of really wanting to open the game up to new people. I kind of want to create a massive attention around snooker."
He doesn't seem particularly arrogant, nor is there any false modesty. Snooker is almost a lone sport, played in many ways against yourself and in your head; an internal negotiation of skill and confidence practised, for hours, largely alone. Trump is obviously gregarious, as up for a laugh and night out with friends as any 21-year-old, but a lifetime of self-reliance and discipline (in the sport, at least) definitely shows. He hasn't ever had a coach, apart from the worried attentions of his father when he was much younger, and simply doesn't see the need for one. "I've just kind of learnt on my own. I literally know just by playing a shot, by the feel of it – I can tell, straight away. I don't really need anyone to tell me. Other people try and tweak their techniques and that, but I've just been exactly the same all my life, and I'd never change anything."
Trump was born in Bristol; his parents and most of his family come from either Bristol or Cornwall. His father is a lorry driver, and his mother a cook. It was all very "normal, really. Both doing quite normal jobs, nothing extravagant – just do their work, come home, eat, go to bed." He inherited his mother Georgina's shyness. "I've always been pretty shy. Unless I know someone really well" – or increasingly, if he is being interviewed – "I can't keep a conversation going more than 10 seconds, really."
He doesn't remember this himself, but his father has said that he bought him a mini snooker table when he was three, and could instantly tell that his toddler had talent and application; he played his first competitive game at six, standing on a cardboard box, and had his first sponsorship deal at eight. By nine he had been sufficiently noticed for World Snooker to arrange for him to meet his hero, Ronnie O'Sullivan, at the Welsh Open. "It was a bit weird, meeting your hero for the first time." (They have since become quite friendly, and share a manager in Fung). Trump won the national under-15s when he was 10 – "That was when I thought that I might have a future in the game" – and at 13 he beat Mike Hallett, a former world No 6, who, minutes later, saw the boy playing on some swings. "That made me feel a lot better," Hallett has said, wryly. Later in his teens Trump was playing, and winning, 40-50 tournaments a year.
He isn't oblivious to what this has cost his parents. "It was hard work for them. Obviously my dad never really had time out to go and do normal things. He was working all week, and then driving me on weekends. They've never really been on holiday. They spent all their money on me, growing up. So it would obviously be nice to repay that. I don't want to just throw money at them, I want it to be thoughtful. I'll have a think, and ask them, and see what we come up with."
It was a shock, when he turned pro, and moved to Romford (a hotbed of world-class snooker players, it turns out), to start losing games. There were far fewer tournaments at first, six or seven a year, so lots of time to brood on what went wrong. The sports press began to notch him up as a disappointment, an underachiever. Alone, and fending for himself for the first time – "I can just about use the oven. And it is hard, learning to use a washing machine and stuff" – he was, also for the first time, properly lonely. "I would come here" – to Grove Academy, where he practises; in competition season he is here for about five hours a day – "then go home, and just sit at home until the next day." Travelling, especially abroad, he sometimes now pays for a friend to come along, otherwise it is as it was in China last month: "Getting up, getting ready, playing my game, and just going back to my hotel, eating on my own, going to sleep, and that's it."
In China – where snooker is huge, even among the quite young, and he has been a pin-up, frequently mobbed by female autograph-seekers, since he was 17 – he broke up with his girlfriend of a year, a drama student. The way he describes it is somehow simultaneously honestly insightful and oblivious, both to the hurt he might cause, and to the fact that he's effectively diagnosing something fame might do to him if he's not careful. "We were never really seeing each other, because this is her last year at uni and obviously I've been travelling, nearly every two or three weeks, and so it just got to the point where it was like, 'There really is no point.'" It hasn't been too hard, though. "I won China straight away, and then I had the World Championships to concentrate on, and there's been so much attention from other people and that, it was kind of easy to put it to the back of my mind, and that was it, really. It was like a year of being with her was just gone. It was quite strange, because when I split up with my previous girlfriend [whom he had been with for a year and half] it was really hard to get over, for like, a month, but this time there was no emotion, nothing. I just kind of shut it off. I don't know – I could wake up one day and it might sink in, but obviously a year's a lot of time to just shut off, like that." In the meantime, he announced to a newspaper, with little hint of tongue-in-cheek, that "if there are groupies, bring 'em on, the more the merrier. I'm young, free and single."
And for the moment he's enjoying it. He gets recognised nearly everywhere he goes, asked for autographs and pictures; he basks in the attention. Is that what he really wants? He laughs. "Only from girls. No – obviously – when you're growing up, you kind of dream about being famous and that – but when you … I think … I won't mind it for maybe a couple of weeks, but I dunno how I'll take it after that. I think it could get quite annoying, But I'm enjoying it for the time being."
A couple of the elder statesmen of the sport have warned that he has a choice – dedication, sacrifice and world domination – or fun and fame and the occasional good tournament. What does he want? "Both. I think I dedicate myself to snooker – while I'm in season, it's just snooker, snooker, snooker – but when I'm away from it I'm completely the opposite – just go out and have fun." And what's your idea of fun? The answer is immediate. "Driving around in a supercar making as much noise as possible – getting as much attention and as much people looking at me as possible." He's definitely on his way to that particular goal.