John Higgins thinks it will be strange to have a limited number of fans back
Covid-19 makes John Higgins more "apprehensive" than usual as he heads to the Crucible this week seeking his fifth world snooker title.
The World Snooker Championship will be the first UK sporting event played in front of spectators since the pandemic.
But their number will be limited and the players will be separated by plastic screens.
"It will be a little bit surreal but I'll give it my best shot," four-time winner Higgins told BBC Radio Scotland.
The 45-year-old Scot, who has also been runner-up for the last three seasons in a row in Sheffield, points out that players will be tested for the virus the day before their first match and then again before the quarter-finals.
"If players test positive, someone could be forced to pull out of the tournament and you could get a bye to the semi-finals," he told Sportsound. "Let's hope it all goes well and the 32 players turning up next week are all negative and then the tournament can run without any hitches."
Higgins thinks the abnormal atmosphere could work against the top players because it will reduce the pressure on qualifiers and underdogs.
"The first time I got there, I played Allan McManus and I totally collapsed," he recalled. "I just wasn't ready for the cauldron that the Crucible brings to the sport.
"The younger ones coming through that show no fear, they do show a bit of fear at the Crucible and maybe that is not going to be there this year."
World Snooker has already held a couple of what Higgins described as "tester" tournaments where players had to enter a "bubble" at their hotel and "that was us spirited to a little part of the hotel and we could only come out of our room to play our matches".
"It's funny saying it's going to be different having spectators there when three or four months ago it would have been just normal," he said.
"I've been putting the work in every day and I've been hitting the ball well in practice. It's been tough losing the last three finals, but I know what it takes to win there."
