Why Did Stephen Hendry Tell Stan Moody to Change His Attitude?
Stephen Hendry knows what it looks like when a gifted young player lets frustration take over. He has told British prospect Stan Moody to keep his cool against opponents who play a different game, and he used his own early career as a warning. Moody lost 5-2 to Liam Highfield in the quarter-finals. The result was not the only problem.
“I wasn’t happy with his attitude in the match he lost to Highfield,” Hendry said, as reported by Metro. “Every time the camera went to him in his chair the body language wasn’t great.”
A Lesson From the Chair
Hendry said he does not object to confidence. “He’s cocky, which you need, I don’t mind cocky at all,” he said. The issue was how Moody appeared to react to Highfield’s style of play. “You’ve got to realise that other players are entitled to play how they want to play. It’s just about you and the table, forgetting what your opponent’s doing.”
That advice did not come from a position of detachment. Hendry described being the same kind of player in his own early days. In one match he won, he sat in his chair acting as if the whole thing bored him. “What’s this guy doing? It’s a different game to how I play,” he recalled thinking. He then went further in a press conference, saying something he now calls “completely the wrong thing to say” and “like a spoiled brat”: “Why is this old man playing like this when I want to pot the balls?”
Playing Your Own Game Without Dismissing Others
The point Hendry makes is not that Moody lacks talent or fight. It is that young players can mistake a different tempo for a lesser style. Highfield’s speed, or lack of it, may have been exactly what unsettled Moody. Hendry could not say for certain. What he could say is that reacting badly to an opponent’s rhythm is a mistake.
“You’ve got to quickly get out of that and just think that these guys are there for a reason because they’re bloody good players,” he said. “Whether they play the game differently to you, they’re still great, great snooker players and you’ve got to find a way to beat them.”
That is the practical lesson for Moody and for anyone moving through the ranks. The table rewards discipline. An opponent who appears slow, awkward, or unorthodox is not an excuse to switch off. At the level where matches are decided by small margins, the player who lets body language betray frustration often loses the next frame before it begins.
Hendry’s message is not an attack on Moody’s character. It is a reminder that professional snooker is as much a contest of composure as it is of potting. The sooner a young player treats every style as legitimate, the easier it becomes to beat the person playing it.