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Michael Holt has had a frustrating start to the season and is not sure he will ever solve the problem holding him back, despite having an all-time great helping him out.
The Hitman had a solid campaign last time round but this one has started disappointingly, with early defeats in a string of events.
It has not been disastrous and he can put turn things around at the ongoing English Open and upcoming Xi’an Grand Prix, but it is fair to say Holt has been unhappy with how he has played so far this season.
‘You can obviously never pick and choose whether you win or lose, but what you are in control of is how you perform on the day,’ Holt told Metro.
‘My performances so far have been shocking. They’ve been pathetic, embarrassing, awful. That’s what I’m upset about. It’s the performing badly.
‘I should be used to it by now, I’d love to take it better, but I can’t, it kills me.’
The 47-year-old knows more than most about life on the professional tour, having first turned pro in 1996, and he is convinced that success would be achieved just by avoiding the ‘shocking’ displays he mentions.
‘If a player goes all the way through the season and doesn’t play badly, you can’t fail to win 100 grand,’ he said. ‘You’d be absolutely cursed not to win 100 grand if you just didn’t play bad all year.
‘The standard is very high, but generally players aren’t playing as well as they can. if you watch the qualifiers, people are missing balls, so if you just played okay…that’s what the top players do, they just don’t play bad.’
Many players will struggle to put their finger on what is making them play poorly and others will struggle to admit it, but Holt is clear on where his problem lies.
‘It’s nerves, it’s just nerves,’ he said. ‘It can only be that. My game’s there. I’m potting all the balls in practice.
‘But as my friend and mentor, Steve Davis, says to me every time I mention about practice, he just cuts me dead. He doesn’t care what you’re like in practice because it’s irrelevant. And he’s right.’
That’s a serious name-drop from the Hitman, who has been looking to delve into the vast reserves of knowledge boasted by the legendary six-time world champion.
‘I’ve been chatting to him for a couple of years,’ said Holt of his link-up with the Nugget. ‘He was my hero as a kid and they say don’t meet your heroes because they might disappoint you, but I love him more now than I did then.
‘We’ve always got on, we’ve got a similar sense of humour. So we’ve always chatted and a couple years ago he just offered a bit of help and we’re not talking every day, but just a few texts every now and again.
‘So I’ve literally got the best resource ever and I still can’t win!’
Having identified his problem and with Davis helping him out to work on it, what is stopping Holt on solving the issue?
After years of trying to eradicate the nerves and improve his mentality, he is not convinced he or anyone can really achieve it.
‘I’m obsessed with the mindset thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve read loads of books. I’m really interested in it because I know that’s the difference, basically, between the rest of us and the top boys.
‘There are three groups of players, basically. You’ve got players with the skill level and the mindset. They’re very few and far between, your Mark Selbys, your Neil Robertsons, your Ronnies, your John Higgins and your Mark Williams. That crew. The psychopaths, right?
‘Then you’ve got another group of players who’ve got the same skill level but the mindset’s not quite right, so obviously they can’t get to that level. It’s tough for them.
‘Then you’ve got the other group of players who are not that good anyway, so they don’t matter, they just need to get to be better players first. They’re on the tour, but they’re not quite at the level, they need to get better.’
Holt says there is always hope for that group of players as they can improve their skill level, then if they already had the mindset mastered, they will shine.
‘A great example is Neil Robertson,’ he said. ‘Neil’s always had the mindset, he’s born with it. And obviously he works hard and he does everything he can because he’s an incredible professional. But I first played him years ago in the qualifiers, before he dropped off and he wasn’t that good. He had the mindset, so he went back, he got good and then as soon as he was good enough obviously the rest of his history, he became an incredible champion.
‘Kyren Wilson had the mindset. He believed he would be world champion, 10 years before he won it. He worked hard, got good, and he’s reaping the rewards.
‘But the mindset thing, you will get people that say you can teach it, but I don’t know many examples of somebody that’s changed their character, because that’s what it is, your character.’
Holt will keep on plugging away, hoping to get comfortable at the table more often and, as he puts it, ‘take the shackles off’ on a regular basis.
It is a battle with himself, though, that he is not sure he can win.
‘I know I’ll probably come across as being negative. I’m not being negative,’ he said. ‘Nobody believes in their ability more than I do. And that’s where the problem and the frustration comes from. Maybe I’m deluded, but I know I’m not. I can play the game.
‘The thing that stops me making the next step, like a lot of other players that maybe aren’t quite brave enough to admit it, is the fact that they are not playing in the matches like they can, as regular as they could be able to.
‘That’s because of nerves, temperament, bottle, anxiety whichever way you want to call it, that’s the difference.
‘Ultimately, you are who you are, aren’t you?’
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