Gary Wilson enjoyed the best result of his snooker career in May and has since had the most eventful summer of his life away from the baize.
The 33-year-old beat the odds to reach the World Championship semi-finals at the Crucible, only falling to eventual champion Judd Trump in the final four.
The £100,000 prize for reaching the semis was easily the biggest financial win of the Tyneside Terror’s career and he had every intention of enjoying the cash in the off-season.
Wilson got engaged to girlfriend Robyn in some style on his travels, but also had to deal with a hat-trick of natural disasters.
‘We went to New Zealand, Singapore, Hawaii and Los Angeles and the whole trip was amazing,’ Wilson told World Snooker. ‘To see so many different places was fantastic.
‘We got engaged in Hawaii on a sunset boat trip. When I went down on one knee, everyone started clapping. There was a band on the boat who played a song we like, from a Disney short film called Lava, so we had a dance to that.
‘When we were in Los Angeles there were two earthquakes. During the second one, which was the biggest one measuring 7.1 (on the Richter scale) we were only around 20 miles from the epicentre, which doesn’t sound much but in fact it was safe.
‘We were in a bar when the lights and TV started shaking. I was more excited than scared, it was only afterwards we found out from the news we were quite close to the epicentre.
‘We flew home the next day so we were’t worried about aftershocks. Funnily enough there was also an earthquake in New Zealand while we were there, though it was so small we didn’t feel it.’
Wilson will be back to the normality of the snooker season later this month at the Riga Masters after he made a successful return to the table following his Crucible success.
The Geordie has played twice since his semi-final run and won twice, qualifying for Riga and the International Championship in China in August.
Now up to number 20 in the world thanks to his Sheffield run, Wilson has seen his odds tumble for ranking tournaments, going in as joint eighth favourite in Latvia at 22/1 with Betfair.
Wilson has confirmed that he won’t be happy until he wins a tournament and that could come as quickly as this month.
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