Further to my recent post on Steve Davis, this is from an interview that took place just before his triumph against John Higgins:
Davis continued to dominate snooker throughout the 1980s and, even now, he has won more professional tournaments than any other player in the game. He has also not forgotten what shaped his extraordinary drive. "You need to be intense, single-minded and angry. It's not necessarily a chip on your shoulder but there is a testosterone-fuelled anger in the best sportsmen. As you get older you get softer in the centre and all you can do is attempt to relight the flame every now and then."
It's great, revealing insight. Nobody ever thought of mild-mannered Steve Davis as an angry man, but it was there, just beneath that placid surface, and it drove him on. One of the surprises of Alastair Campbell's diaries is the extent to which Blair comes across as a much more intense character than he seems in public - there is or was a kind of determined fury in him too. But Blair, like Davis, knew how to control and channel that anger to great effect; neither let their anger get control of them.
Not with the mic on anyway.
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