Snooker | The snooker star solved his weight problem with surgery: “I wanted the most extreme of them all”

Snooker star Shaun Murphy40, told a BBC snooker-themed podcast about the big life change he made in the summer.

The Englishman, who struggled with weight problems throughout his career, underwent gastric bypass surgery in the summer.

In 2005, the Englishman, who won the world championship completely from scratch, said that repeatedly unsuccessful diets had an increasingly negative effect on his mental endurance over the years.

In recent years, the problems became even more pronounced, when the constant flood of outrageous messages on social media caused Murphy’s mental health and self-image to seriously falter.

“I finally decided I had to do something about it or this was the end of me mentally and maybe physically,” Murphy said. Framedon the podcast.

In summer in the surgery, a large part of Murphy’s stomach was removed. Nowadays, it is practically physically impossible for an Englishman to overeat.

“There are four different types of gastric bypass surgery. I wanted the most extreme of them, the one that can’t be undone. Since my stomach is so small now, it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever be able to eat enough calories at one time to gain weight again,” Murphy explained.

“Now I can eat whatever I want, but I can only eat very, very little of it at a time. I don’t remember when I finished my coffee, because my stomach physically can’t hold that much liquid.”

At the time of the World Championships last spring, Murphy said that his weight had already increased to 120 kilograms. Now almost 25 kilos have already dropped from that reading.

Murphy is by no means the only top player who has started investing in taking care of his physical health in recent years.

Last fall, four-time world champion John Higgins entered the opening tournaments of the season in much better shape than before. This year, Northern Ireland’s number one player has succeeded in a similar weight loss operation Mark Allen.

Murphy considers it obvious that feeling lighter is a significant advantage also at the snooker table. The technically correct execution of a snooker stroke requires keeping the body and stick as close as possible to the horizontal plane near the surface of the table. It is naturally much easier for a person with a dexterity.

For example, he tells an incident from last spring’s World Cup, where Murphy was called for a foul when he hit the ball with his suit while going into the hitting position.

“It was actually quite a funny situation, but it was because I couldn’t reach over the table.”

Murphy is has been standard equipment at the top of the professional tour for over 15 years. In addition to the 2005 World Cup win, he has also played in the Crucible final in 2009, 2015 and 2021. Currently, Murphy is ranked 13th on the tour.