'Horrible, horrible time' – Ricky Walden couldn't sleep and turned to drink as he feared 21-year snooker career was over
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ByEurosport
Updated 07/02/2022 at 11:05 GMT
Ricky Walden has described his days in the snooker wilderness as a "horrible, horrible time" ahead of his Players Championship opener with Mark Allen on Tuesday night. The three-time ranking event winner has battled back from a chronic back problem that saw Walden drop dramatically down the rankings with his career in jeopardy. "My mind was telling me that I was done," he admitted.
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Ricky Walden will face Mark Allen in the Players Championship first round on Tuesday evening feeling like he has finally sorted out the chronic back problems that threatened to torpedo his 21-year professional career.
Walden lost 10-6 to Allen in the final of the event in Manchester six years ago before tumbling into a physical and mental morass.
The 2013 world and UK semi-finalist was ranked sixth in the world in 2015 before health problems saw him drop out of the sport's top 16 and fall to a lowly 46 with his future shrouded in uncertainty.
Helped by committed physiotherapy to rectify a bulging disc in his back suffered in December 2016, Walden has slowly started to regain momentum on and off the table. He is back up to 18 in the rankings and is 12th on the one-year list having reached semi-finals at the Northern Ireland Open and German Masters this season.
In both events, he has lost to 6-3 to Mark Allen and Zhao Xintong in the last four, the respective winners of those tournaments, but his consistency has earned him a spot at the Players Championship for the first time since his run to the final.
It is a marked upturn in fortunes with his best returns between 2016 until 2021 being only four quarter-final appearances over five years as a series of early exits blighted his self-belief and saw him take solitude in drink.
"I’m never usually worried about money, but I was then because I didn’t know where I was going to earn, it’s all I’ve ever done, where do you pay the bills? It was all that kind of regular dark stuff that you’re thinking," said Walden speaking to The Metro.
"I couldn’t get hours on the practice table because I was in pain, I’d turn up to a tournament under-prepared and lose to pretty much everyone for about two years. No disrespect, but people who I’d normally be putting away comfortably and I was getting beat comfortably.
"I was nowhere any top 32 or 16 tournament so I had loads of spare time, but I couldn’t practice.
I was drinking more, I didn’t have a drinking problem, but I’d be sat in the house having a few beers, no fitness work going on because of the back.
"I was just fed up, I wouldn’t say I’d given up but I was doing the wrong things more than the right things because my mind was telling me that I was done.
"It was a horrible, horrible time and that’s why I feel so grateful to be out the other side and going back the other way now."
The relieved and thankful Chester professional turns 40 in November and hope life will begin for his ambition of again competing with the elite eight years after his biggest career victory over Allen (10-7) in the International Championship final in Chengdu.
Once dubbed 'The Stamina Man', Walden has returned to running after overcoming his demons. The triple ranking event winner with 313 centuries to his name pointed out he was not suffering from depression despite the mental hurdle of sleep deprivation.
"It was more mental than physical in the end. It wasn’t like I couldn’t walk, the back was just injured, I couldn’t do a lot of hours. It would tighten and spasm, it wasn’t like it was excruciating or debilitating," he said.
"It was more mentally that I knew I was gone. I couldn’t play, couldn’t practice. I went through sleep problems, really struggling to sleep.
I’d go to bed at 10pm trying to get an early night for practice, wake up at 1am and just be awake. I’d be sat downstairs on my own till 6am just worrying, thinking my career’s done.
"I wouldn’t call it depression. I just feel as though it was a tough time and that’s how it was. I think some things get labelled depression but it’s just tough times. Depression is another thing.
"I was just feeling sorry for myself, feeling down, worried about my future, drinking too much. I wouldn’t call it depression, I’d call it a dark mind space.
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"With depression, even when things are rosy you can’t get out of bed. I felt as though, if I had depression the last thing I’d want to do is go and show up at a snooker tournament, whereas I’d have killed to be there, I was just unable to do that and I was worrying.
"My game’s always been there on the practice table but that means nothing in the arena, you’ve got to work on the mind as well. It’s the full package of practice, mind, fitness, confidence, it’s all together.
"Even though I’ve done great to get myself back in position, I’ve got loads more to keep working on."
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