Ding Junhui

Ding Junhui
birthday	1st April 1987 (age 33)
place of birth	Yíxīng
nationality	People's Republic of China
Nickname (s)	Star of the East The Dragon
professional	since 2003
Prize money	£ 3,866,644 (as of August 27, 2020)
Highest break	147 (6 ×)
Century Breaks	537 (as of August 27, 2020)
Main tour successes
World championships	-
Ranking tournament victories	14th
Minor tournament victories	4th
World rankings
Highest WRL place	1 (December 2014, January – February 2015)
Current WRL location	12 (as of August 17, 2020)

Ding Junhui ( Chinese  丁俊暉  /  丁俊晖 , Pinyin Dīng Jùnhuī ; born April 1, 1987 in Yixing , Jiangsu Province ) is a Chinese snooker player and former number 1 in the world rankings .

Career

Youth and first professional years

Ding started snooker at the age of nine and has been a professional since 2003.

In 2005, at the age of 18, he won his first professional tournament, the China Open . In the final, which was followed by over 100 million viewers on television in China, he defeated seven-time world champion and second in the world rankings Stephen Hendry 9: 5.

The greatest successes of his career include winning the UK Championship in 2005 and 2009 , one of the three most important and prestigious tournaments of the year alongside the Masters and the World Championship . In 2005 he defeated the 30-year-old player and six-time world champion Steve Davis in a "generation comparison" in the final, and in 2009 he defeated John Higgins . Ding is the first UK champion who is not from the British Isles. With his victory at the Masters in 2011 , in which he defeated Marco Fu 10: 4 in the final, he won another of the three big titles.

Ding also won the Northern Ireland Trophy in the 2006/07 season by beating Ronnie O'Sullivan 9-6 .

At the Masters 2007 he managed the first maximum break of his career in the first round against Anthony Hamilton . At this tournament, Ding reached the final, but had no chance against a furious Ronnie O'Sullivan and lost 3:10. After the match, O'Sullivan confirmed that the Chinese had the potential to be an outstanding snooker player: “ Ding will be a multiple world champion. “However, this tournament caused a kink in his career. Only at the Grand Prix 2009 in Glasgow did he reach the final of a ranking tournament again.

2008/09 season

On October 26th, 2008 Ding won the final of the World Series of Snooker in Warsaw 6-4 against Ken Doherty . At the UK Championship he played his second maximum on December 16, 2008 against John Higgins . He was the eleventh player with more than one maximum break at the time.

Season 2009/2010 to season 2013/14

After a long dry spell, which threw him back to 13th place by 2009, the Chinese started the 2009/10 snooker season extremely successfully . In the first three tournaments he made it to the final twice and at the Shanghai Masters he reached the quarter-finals, where he lost again to the eventual winner Ronnie O'Sullivan. In late 2009, he finally won his fourth Main Tour title at the UK Championship. At the last tournament of the season before the World Cup, the China Open, he made it to the final again, but was defeated by Mark J. Williams 6:10 in front of his home crowd . At the 2011 World Cup , he reached the semifinals, but lost to Judd Trump at 15:17. In the first round of the FFB Snooker Open 2012 he achieved his third maximum and only two days later at PTC Event 11 another. He holds the record for the shortest interval between two maximum breaks.

He won his fifth title in a ranking tournament in February 2012 at the Welsh Open by beating Mark Selby 9: 6 in the final . At the Grand Finals of the Players Tour Championship 2012/13 , he managed his fifth maximum break against Mark Allen . He also won the tournament, where he was able to convert a 3-0 deficit in the final against Neil Robertson into a 4-3 victory.

Ding at the German Masters 2013

At the 4th Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games 2013 in Incheon, Korea, he was defeated in the final (men's singles) to his compatriot Cao Yupeng with 2: 4 and only received the silver medal as the title favorite. In the team competition, however, he was successful together with Liang Wenbo and Tian Pengfei . They prevailed in the final against the " Team of Independent Athletes " ( Aditya Mehta and Brijesh Damani) 3-2.

In September 2013 he won the Shanghai Masters with a 10: 6 final victory over his compatriot Xiao Guodong . Only one month later he won another ranking tournament with the Indian Open 2013 with a clear 5-0 final victory over local hero Aditya Mehta . Ding also won the title at the International Championship in Chengdu . He beat Marco Fu in the final just 10: 9. At the German Masters 2014 , he expanded the series to four wins in a row in world ranking tournaments. Stephen Hendry last succeeded in doing this in 1990/91 . At the last tournament of the season before the World Cup, the China Open , Ding made his fifth win of the season against world number one Neil Robertson . Hendry last succeeded in doing this, also in 1991.

Season 2014/15 and 2015/16

In June 2014, Ding won the first tournament of the 2014/15 season with the Yixing Open . In the final he defeated his English opponent Michael Holt 4-2; it was his third win in a tournament on the PTC series. In the further course of the season he reached the semifinals of the Shanghai Masters , the Champion of Champions and the China Open , but he also failed in six tournaments in the first round.

In October 2015, Ding won the Haining Open, the only PTC tournament of the 2015/16 season taking place outside of Europe, with a 4-3 final victory over Ricky Walden . In 2016 he reached the final of the World Cup for the first time, but lost there with 14:18 against Mark Selby. At the end of the season he was back in the top 16 of the world rankings, from which he had fallen out in the meantime. The following season was more successful and he only won the special format of the 6-Red World Championship 2016 in September . He then reached the final at the Shanghai Masters and won the tournament for the second time against reigning world champion Mark Selby .

2016/17 season and 2017/18 season

At the 2017 Snooker World Championship , after a 13:10 win in the quarter-finals against Ronnie O'Sullivan, he reached the semifinals against Mark Selby, in which he temporarily led 5: 4 and finally lost 15:17.

At the beginning of the 2017/18 season , he won the Team World Cup together with Liang Wenbo for the second time since 2011 . In September he reached the final of the World Open and secured his 13th world rankings title with a 10-3 win over Kyren Wilson .

Ding could not defend the title of the Shanghai Masters 2017 due to conjunctivitis .

He reached his second final of the season at the World Grand Prix 2018 , but lost 3:10 to Ronnie O'Sullivan . The success of the season was enough for world number 3, so that Ding did not have to qualify for the 2018 World Snooker Championship . In the first round he clearly defeated Xiao Guodong 10: 3, followed by a 13: 4 victory over Anthony McGill . During the first two rounds he played four centurys. In the quarterfinals, Ding was eliminated by 5:13 against Barry Hawkins .

In 2018 he was inducted into the Snooker Hall of Fame as the first Asian snooker player .

In 2019 he surprisingly won the UK Championship .

successes

Ding Junhui with the German Masters 2014 trophy

Ranked tournaments

• China Open - 2005, 2014
• UK Championship - 2005 , 2009 , 2019
• Northern Ireland Trophy - 2006
• Welsh Open - 2012
• Players Tour Championship - Grand Finals - 2013
• Shanghai Masters - 2013 , 2016
• Indian Open - 2013
• International Championship - 2013
• German Masters - 2014
• World Open - 2017

Minor ranking tournaments

• Players Tour Championship, Event 5 - 2010
• Scottish Open - 2012
• Yixing Open - 2014
• Haining Open - 2015

Invitation tournaments

• Jiangsu Classic - 2008
• Masters - 2011
• Championship League - 2012
• 6-Red World Championship - 2016

Team competitions

• World Cup - 2011 , 2017

Others (selection)

• IBSF U21 World Championship - 2002
• ACBS Asian Cup - 2002
• ACBS U21 Asian Cup - 2002
• Asian Games Singles - 2002 , 2006
• Asian Games, doubles - 2006
• Asian Games, Team - 2006 , 2010
• World Series of Snooker, Warsaw - 2008
• Asian Indoor & Martial Arts Games : 2013 - gold / team, silver / individual

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ding Junhui. In: worldsnooker.com. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , January 11, 2015, accessed August 8, 2015 .  
2. ↑ Profile of Ding Junhui on CueTracker (as of August 18, 2018)
3. ↑ Snooker Info - 100Centuries (as of August 17, 2018)
4. ↑ World Rankings after the Coral UK Championship 2014 (PDF; 267 kB) In: worldsnooker.com . World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association . December 8, 2014. Archived from the original on December 31, 2014. Retrieved on December 31, 2014.
5. ↑ World Rankings. (PDF; 261 kB) After The Xuzhou Open 2015 (AT3). (No longer available online.) World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , Jan. 27, 2015, archived from the original on July 13, 2015 ; accessed on August 8, 2015 .  
6. ↑ Team list final team men, AIMAG 2013 ( Memento from July 7th 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) on AIMAG2013.org, accessed on July 7th 2013
7. ↑ Ding Junhui. Season 2014-2015. In: CueTracker Snooker Results & Statistics Database. Ron Florax, accessed August 8, 2015 .  
8. ^ O'Sullivan and Williams dominate awards. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , May 10, 2018, accessed May 11, 2018 .  
9. ↑ UK Championship 2019: A winner from the ashes. In: SnookerPRO. December 8, 2019, accessed on August 8, 2020 (German). 

Web links

Commons : Ding Junhui  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Player profile on World Snooker (English)
• Ding Junhui in the Snooker Database (English)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Ding is the family name here, Junhui is the first name.