{"id":480,"date":"2022-03-23T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T10:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.solutions\/snooker\/legend\/alex-higgins\/"},"modified":"2022-03-23T12:08:36","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T12:08:36","slug":"alex-higgins","status":"publish","type":"legend","link":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/legend\/alex-higgins\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Higgins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Alexander Gordon Higgins<\/strong>&nbsp;was a Northern Irish professional&nbsp;snooker&nbsp;player who is remembered as one of the most iconic figures in the game. Nicknamed &#8220;Hurricane Higgins&#8221; because of his fast play,&nbsp;he was&nbsp;World Champion&nbsp;in&nbsp;1972&nbsp;and&nbsp;1982, and runner-up in&nbsp;1976&nbsp;and&nbsp;1980. He became the first qualifier to win the world title in 1972, a feat only two players have achieved since \u2013&nbsp;Terry Griffiths&nbsp;in 1979 and&nbsp;Shaun Murphy&nbsp;in 2005. He won the UK Championship in 1983 and the Masters in 1978 and 1981, making him one of eleven players to have completed snooker&#8217;s&nbsp;Triple Crown. He was also&nbsp;World Doubles champion&nbsp;with&nbsp;Jimmy White&nbsp;in 1984, and won the&nbsp;World Cup&nbsp;three times with the&nbsp;All-Ireland&nbsp;team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Higgins came to be known as the &#8220;People&#8217;s Champion&#8221; because of his popularity, and is often credited with having brought the game of snooker to a wider audience, contributing to its peak in popularity in the 1980s. He had a reputation as an unpredictable and difficult character. He was a heavy smoker,struggled with drinking and gambling, and admitted to using cocaine and marijuana. First diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998,&nbsp;Higgins died of multiple causes in his Belfast home on 24 July 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":494,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"categories":[],"class_list":["post-480","legend","type-legend","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/legend\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/legend"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/legend"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.derniercriweb.co.uk\/snooker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}