David Grace

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Grace
David Grace
birthday 5th May 1985 (age 35)
place of birth Leeds
nationality EnglandEngland England
professional 2008/09, 2011–2018, 2019-
Prize money £ 215,648 (as of August 30, 2020)
Highest break 139 ( PTC 2011/12 - Event 3 )
Century Breaks 52 (as of August 30, 2020)
Main tour successes
World championships -
Ranking tournament victories -
Minor tournament victories -
World rankings
Highest WRL place 43 (August 2017)
Current WRL location 84 (as of August 17, 2020)

David Grace (born May 5, 1985 in Leeds ) is an English snooker player . Since 2008 he has been playing on the professional tour with interruptions .

Career

Early years

David Grace was already successful in his youth and became England U19 champion in 2003. Two years later he won the English amateur championship for the first time . He then took part in the European and World Championships and took part in the Pontins Pro Am series, in which professionals also played. Twice he reached the semifinals there and qualified for the Grand Final, where he beat a top 16 player with Ryan Day and got into the quarterfinals. He also took part in the Pontin's International Open Series to qualify for the professional tour . However, he rarely reached the top ranks and only reached a semi-final once in three years. In 2008 he won the second English championship title and then won the European Championship as an English representative with a 7: 6 win over Craig Steadman .

With his victory he got the right to start the Snooker Main Tour . However, his debut season 2008/09 was not particularly successful. His best result was two wins in qualifying for the Grand Prix before losing to Liang Wenbo in the round of 64 . Otherwise, he lost his first game in all qualifications for ranked tournaments, so he had to leave the professional tour again.

For this he won the silver medal at the World Games 2009 in Kaohsiung after he had beaten Soheil Vahedi in the semifinals and was defeated in the final Nigel Bond . After another unsuccessful PIOS season, he entered the 2010/11 Players Tour Championship , a series of smaller professional tournaments with amateur participation. He qualified several times for the main round and at the MIUS Cup 2010 he defeated Barry Pinches and the top 16 player Liang Wenbo and came in round 3.

Professional career

The return to the main tour he made in 2011 by facing the first event of the Q School prevailed. In the playoff he defeated Zhang Anda 4-1. His second professional season was more successful than his first year, and one of the highlights was the advance to the round of 16 at two PTC tournaments ( tournament 10 in Sheffield and tournament 12 in Fürstenfeldbruck ). With Matthew Stevens , he beat another top player. In the big tournaments he usually did not get past the second round, but at the China Open he reached round 3 and narrowly missed the main tournament with 4: 5 against Tom Ford . Although the small tournaments brought too few points for a sufficient world ranking to extend his professional status, he still secured two more years on the Main Tour via the PTC overall ranking.

The 2012/13 season started again with good PTC results, including a round of 16 at the first tournament in Gloucester . At the Shanghai Masters he again just missed the main tournament 4: 5 against Peter Ebdon . Otherwise there were a lot of first round defeats. The following year he qualified for the final round of 32nd at the Shanghai Masters against Tom Ford for the first time. However, he was clearly defeated by Barry Hawkins 5-0. Two further round of 16 results at the Players Tour Championship were faced with many defeats at the beginning of the important tournaments. So he stayed in the rankings between 80 and 90 in the three years and would have lost his professional status again if the PTC overall standings had not brought him two more Main Tour years.

The next season began with another PTC round of 16 at the Yixing Open 2014 , but after that he only got 3 more victories in the entire season. So in 2015/16 he was under great pressure to defend his professional status. The breakthrough came again at the Shanghai Masters , where he qualified for the main tournament for the second time with a win over Ali Carter and, thanks to a failure of Mark Selby, made it to the round of 16 for the first time in a full ranking tournament. At the UK Championship he increased the result again significantly when he beat Peter Ebdon and Martin Gould , among others , and only lost to Liang Wenbo 4-6 in the semi-finals. He then reached the quarter-finals for the first time at the Gibraltar Open at a PTC tournament. Again he won the tournament against Ebdon and lost to Liang. In the one-year ranking , he was among the top 32 - which earned him qualification for the World Grand Prix - and in the official world rankings over two years he moved up to 60th place, making it the first direct qualification for the Main Tour.

In the 2016/17 season he had another success at the Paul Hunter Classic , where he won three of four games to zero and made it to the quarter-finals. In the special format Snooker Shoot-Out he also reached the quarterfinals, which he lost to Shaun Murphy . Two more times he reached the round of 32 by the end of the season. At the final World Cup , he then won more than one game for the first time, he beat Thor Chuan Leong , Mark Joyce and Akani Songsermsawad and made it into the main round of the World Cup at the Crucible Theater . There he held the game against the world number 14. Kyren Wilson open until 6-7, but then lost 6:10. The results brought him up to 44th place in the world rankings. After the end of the season he still won the Vienna Open 2017 , a Pro-Am tournament in Austria. He decided the final against Nigel Bond 5-2 for himself. In the following season he then had to defend many points from the previous season for the first time. After the round of 32 at the 2017 China Championship , he reached his highest ranking position in 43rd place, followed by a black series with 7 defeats at the beginning. It was not until the Scottish Open that there was success again with the round of 16. After that he only made it to the third round at the Welsh Open 2018 . Since both tournaments had only a medium rating, he lost so many points that he fell back to 71st place and lost his professional status again.

About the Q School Grace then tried the immediate re-qualification, but he was eliminated early in all three tournaments. In 2018/19 he then took part in the newly introduced Challenge Tour , where two tour tickets were available. He finished the Challenge Tour in second place and thus earned a tour ticket for 2019/2020 and 2020/2021.

painting

David Grace took art at his A-level and also does portrait painting. He is known for his pictures of well-known snooker players, which he also exhibits and sells.

successes

Ranked tournaments

Qualifying tournaments

Amateur tournaments

swell

  1. ↑ Profile of David Grace on CueTracker (as of March 23, 2019)
  2. ↑ David Grace at SnookerPro.de, accessed on August 13, 2018
  3. ^ Sargeant and Grace to Top Snooker's Challenge Tour , David Caulfield, SnookerHQ, March 7, 2019
  4. ↑ 5 things you may not know about David Grace , BT, December 5, 2015
  5. ^ New Confidence Is Saving Grace , Worldsnooker, Aug. 11, 2015

Web links

Commons : David Grace  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Grace, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English snooker player
DATE OF BIRTH May 5th 1985
PLACE OF BIRTH Leeds