Snooker: White strives to throw off his unwanted burden: The best player never to win World Championship exhibits both sides of his character before seizing the overnight advantage

WHENEVER Jimmy White plays snooker the words 'if only' spring to mind. It is a consequence of reaching five Embassy World Championship finals and failing to win any.

It was the past that stalked him again yesterday as he established a

9-7 lead in his sixth attempt to go beyond the runners-up position. His opponent, Stephen Hendry, has balked him before, in the 1990, 1992 and 1993 finals, while the tag 'the best player never to have been world champion' hangs round his neck like a stone of extra weight.

Even Hendry, attempting to be the only man other than Steve Davis to win the title for the third year in succession at the Crucible, has sympathy. 'I would love him to win if he wasn't playing me,' he said. 'I know every man and his dog will want him to win this time.' This despite the broken bone in the champion's left arm that normally would guarantee the sympathy vote.

White, of course, plays down his failures with a bravado that is not as convincing as his exuberant play. 'Let's forget what's happened to me here in the past,' he said to himself as much as anyone else. 'I dearly want to win the championship but it gets harder every year.

'Hendry and Davis have nothing to prove but I have my career to complete. I've had a bad season and now face the biggest hurdle of all to step over. I don't know how I'll play.'

The problem is, no one can predict how White will play. Frequently his snooker reaches a plane that no other player can occupy. But this season the profligate Whirlwind has been more in evidence.

Playing in his first final of the year - his last win in a ranking tournament was 18 months ago - he began yesterday's best-of-35-frames match with the former to the fore. Breaks of 34 and 60 gave him the first frame and he appeared to have the second at his mercy with the colours on their spot. On the pink, however, he missed a relatively simple pot to the middle pocket and allowed Hendry in. The wasteful White had barged in ahead of the clinical.

The rest of the first session belonged to Hendry. He is no longer taking the extra-strength painkillers prescribed him during his semi-final against Davis because they made him 'fuzzy' and in the afternoon session he was the epitome of clarity.

Breaks of 50, 41, 80 and 76 gave him a 5-1 lead and memories were being stirred of the final two years ago when Hendry won 10 frames in a row to take the title from a position of being 14-8 down.

Even White's winning of the final frame of the first session invoked an unhappy recollection. The 5-2 score was identical to last year, when that was a prelude to a subsequent massacre as Hendry won 18-5.

If the afternoon belonged to Hendry, however, the evening was resolutely and flamboyantly White's. He soared to the occasion in the second session, winning seven of the nine frames available to him. Last year he entered the final day 12-4 down, today he is 9-7 up and nine frames away from victory.

The evening revival was launched by a clearance of 33 that stole the eighth frame 70-68. The flow was with White now and it was Hendry, rather than himself, who was making the errors. Indeed, the champion managed to win only two of the last 10 frames yesterday, a ratio that he normally inflicts on others.

The last frame of the day was an mini-epic in itself with the advantage swaying from one side to the other before Hendry missed a long pot and allowed White to clinch the frame and an overnight advantage.