Raj to Riches

One morning in 1998, when he was 17, he was scheduled to play a money game of snooker against a strong amateur player - a race-to-9 games for 500 pounds, or $1,000 in American dollars.

The game was set for nine o'clock, but when nine rolled around only Hundal was there at the club.

He called the guy again and again on his cell phone. "He kept telling me not to worry, that he'd be there soon," Hundal remembers. "'Well, hurry up!' I said. It turned out he never showed up."

All it did was shift the course of Hundal's life forever.

He spotted a poster on the wall of the club about some pool tournament being played there that day, with the winner getting 1,400 pounds. "Mind you, I never played pool before," he says. "But when I looked at the pockets of the table, I said to myself, 'Those pockets are huge, I'm never going to miss. I can't miss from anywhere.' I was overconfident. I didn't respect the game at the time."

All he did was finish third. "Daryl Peach beat me in the semifinals, 11-10," he says. "And to tell you the truth, he got lucky to beat me. He actually dogged it on the hill, nearly scratched, and left me corner hooked. I had no shot.

He says of 9-ball: "What really interested me was that it was an attacking game. I was always a very aggressive snooker player. I wasn't one of those guys who wanted to grind it out. I wanted to make a long red and hit you with an 80, 90, or 100, and say, 'See you later.' So [9-ball] came naturally to me."

Hundal soon found himself well tucked under the wing of Steve "The Knight Rider" Knight, the No. 1 ranked 9-ball player in the U.K. at the time. Knight assumed the role of teen counselor, father figure, guardian angel, and pool coach all wrapped into one.

"He kept me from falling into the wrong hands," he says of Knight, who has now been retired from the professional ranks for years. "He pulled me into the poolroom when I could've been out there on the streets doing something [bad]. Because of him, I stayed on the right track in life.

"He saw the potential in me, once said to me in the club, loud and proud, 'You'll be the best [9-ball] player in the U.K. someday.' He gave me my first pool cue - one worth around $1,200. He said to me, 'Listen, kid, whenever you can, take care of me. But you don't have to.' I mean, he taught me everything, how to not get hustled, how to move at the table. He was the rock for me. A guy who will tell you what time it is. Like if I said I got unlucky to lose, he'd let me know I didn't get unlucky, that I made a mistake to lose. I don't know where I'd be without Steve. Or without loving snooker and pool so much. It probably saved my life."

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