Fan Zhengyi became the 6th Chinese amateur to win the IBSF U21 Snooker Championship, beating compatriot and top seed Luo Honghao 7-6 in a high-quality final after coming back from 3-0 in Beijing. He will be offered a two-year professional tour card for the 2018/2019 season as he becomes the 7th Asian player IN A ROW to win the U21 event.
Fan Zhengyi also topped his group by impressively beating Jackson Page and got to the final by losing only four frames in four matches to finish 10th seed in the Last 32. He whitewashed two opponents including World Cup participant Simon Litchenberg and beat Zhang Jiankang, who attempted a 147 in this event, 6-2 in the semi-finals. Opponent Luo Honghao very quickly became the one to beat after being ranked No.1 in the knockout stages due to being the only player to never drop a set. Since then, he was rarely troubled on his route to the finals, dropping only five frames as he swept past Welsh duo Ben Forety and Under-18 European Snooker Champion Tyler Rees. Both players made seven centuries and twenty-eight +50 breaks between them. That is scary! This is almost sweet revenge for Fan, as in their last major meeting he lost to Luo 4-2 in the opening round of Asian PTC Xuzhou Open in 2015.
So what do we know about these two superstars? Fan is a year younger than Hao at 16-years-old who made it second time lucky, as he lost 6-2 to Yuan Sijun in the 2017 Asian Under 21 Championship. His most recent win in a professional match is against Fang Xiongman 4-3 and losing to Ben Woollaston in the decider afterwards in the 2015 Haining Open. Of course what happens to many Chinese prodigies is that there is always a Youtube at a younger age uploaded purposefully to make us feel inadequate! This is a link as a 14-year-old showing off his long potting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prFbUvjJx2o
Not much is known of Luo Honghao either, but he is a two-time All China Under-21 champion. He had also beaten the likes of Kyren Wilson and Yu Delu in exhibitions as well and is coached at the Wiraka Billiard Academy in Foshan by official World Snooker coach Roger Leighton. Here is the link to him last year as a 16-year-old where he made a maximum break during a U21 tournament: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGDQnq53PAs
This tournament has been very competitive indeed (as opposed to any other event, of course) but you know it’s good when the U18 European Snooker Championships finalist Amir Nardeia and Russian prodigy Ivan Kakovsky failed to make the knockout rounds. It is interesting to note that as well that Welsh had a very successful tournament, with all four players from the valleys reaching the Last 16. It will be really interesting to know what Wales have in the amateur snooker set-up that the rest of the UK doesn’t. Of course, we had Scotsman Chris Totten qualify last season to start his first season on tour this year, but Wales have a huge depth of amateur talent in Emery, Fortey, Page and Rees.
What is amazing is the continued Asian dominance in this tournament alone – even forgetting the statistic in the first paragraph. Amateurs from just three Asian countries (China, Iran and Thailand) are featured in every final since 2002 (there wasn’t an event in 2008); China alone has been involved in nine out fourteen finals; China has won six of them. It’s maddening how quickly China is becoming a snooker superpower – we all knew this anyway but it doesn’t look as if it is going to stop anytime soon!
