Congratulations to Scotland’s Marcus Campbell who has tonight completed an emphatic 4-0 victory over Liang Wenbo in tonight’s European Players Tour Championship Event Three final to take his maiden professional title after almost 20 years as a professional.
Having seen off Andrew Higginson, Peter Ebdon and Mark Selby to progress to his first professional final since the 2009 Shanghai Masters, the smart money was on Liang Wenbo to come through this evening and take the title in Russelsheim.
It has been one of those weekends however where a number of players have defied the odds and so it was then that Marcus came through not just to defeat Liang, but to whitewash him by four frames to nil! The result is one that lifts Marcus up to number 30 on my provisional seedings list and boosts his chances of staying inside that seeding bracket once the rankings are revised following December’s UK Championship.
To those who do not follow snooker so closely this result will appear to be a massive shock but upon closer inspection it is clear that such a run has been coming for some time now as Marcus has performed consistently well for the last couple of seasons. Back in 2008 he made the first maximum of his career whilst in action at the 2008 Bahrain Championship while last season he qualified for a number of venues, twice defeating Judd Trump to do so and also made it back to the Crucible for just the second time in his career.
This form has continued into 2010/11 and the PTC events where he has regularly made it to the final day, last week going as far as the semi-finals before going all the way now in Russelsheim. Whatever the reason for his rise, at 38 years of age he is now finally making a move up the rankings and it will be interesting to see how high he can go. As ever when players in his position begin to win regularly in the qualifiers, if he is to really progress then he will have to perform more regularly in front of the TV cameras against the very best players in the world. History would suggest that this is likely to be a task too far but having once beaten Stephen Hendry 9-0 at the UK Championship, you just never know!
For Liang Wenbo meanwhile although he will be disappointed by the outcome of today’s final, he has at least moved himself back up the ranking list and into contention for a place in the top 16 when the rankings are next revised.
Next stop for the snooker circus will be the Southwest Snooker Academy in Gloucester next week for EPTC4 where I hope to be in attendance for at least part of it and bringing you proper updates from the event rather than commenting on livescores! This does depend on me getting a new mobile phone this week so watch this space!