Fergal O'Brien

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Fergal O'Brien
Fergal O'Brien
birthday 8th March 1972 (age 48)
nationality IrelandIreland Ireland
Nickname (s) The Baby-Faced Assassin
Fearless Fergal
Ferginator
professional since 1991
Prize money £ 1,397,601 as of August 27, 2020
Highest break 147
Century Breaks 227 (as of August 27, 2020)
Main tour successes
World championships -
Ranking tournament victories 1
Minor tournament victories -
World rankings
Highest WRL place 9 ( 00/01 )
Current WRL location 66 (as of August 17, 2020)

Fergal O'Brien (born March 8, 1972 ) is an Irish snooker player . He has been a professional on the Snooker Main Tour since 1991 .

Career

Early years

Until 1991, Fergal O'Brien was not known outside Ireland, but when professional tournaments opened to all players that year, he started his professional career at the age of 19 like hundreds of other players. Therefore he had to go through numerous qualifying rounds, but already in his first tournament, the Dubai Classic , he reached the round of 128. He succeeded two more times during the season. In the Benson and Hedges Satellite Championship , a tournament without the world's best players and ranking points, he reached the round of 32 and beat an experienced professional player with the Australian John Campbell . His first place in the world rankings was number 192. He also took part for the first time in the Irish Professional Championship and reached the semifinals with wins over Ken Doherty and Eugene Hughes . The following year he climbed to the last 64 at the UK Championship . In the second tournament of the Strachan Challenge , he went one round further and beat the world number sixth Neal Foulds . At the Asian Open he won against the number 10 Doug Mountjoy and against the number 2 Steve Davis and for the first time reached the second round of a tournament for ranking points. Another top 32 placement at the International Open brought him to 100th place in the world in the second year.

In the 1993/94 season , the rapid rise continued with two more round of 16 at the European Open and the Welsh Open . Steve James and John Parrott were other top 10 players he beat that year. At the Irish Masters , an invitation tournament, he even managed a 5-2 win against world champion and world number one Stephen Hendry and made it to the semi-finals, which he lost to Alan McManus . At the World Cup at the end of the season, he finally played his way through five rounds and qualified for the first time for the finals of the last 32 at the Crucible Theater . There was then again against McManus with 7:10 last stop. After that he was in 42nd place, saving himself the long way through the qualifying rounds. However, this initially had negative consequences, as he lost the opening game in five tournaments in the next season. This contrasted with the round of 16 at the UK Championship and the Welsh Open and round 3 at the Thailand Open . The next year was similarly changeable, the highlights were the quarter-finals at the Grand Prix and the round of 16 at the British Open with 3 first-round defeats. All in all, that meant two years of stagnation outside the top 32, although he was able to beat absolute top players from the top 8 such as Jimmy White or James Wattana .

Promotion to the top 10

Things went up again in the 1996/97 season . After a further changeable first half, he defeated world number three Peter Ebdon at the Welsh Open and reached the quarter-finals there as well as later at the Thailand Open . Ebdon was his opponent four times the following year. He was able to beat him twice, at the Scottish Open he then won against the new world number three Ken Doherty and reached his second semi-final. He lost that against number 2 John Higgins . At the World Cup he was in the main round for the second time and defeated James Wattana just 10: 9. In the last sixteen he lost against Ebdon with 5:13. That wasn't quite enough for the top 16 in the world rankings, but at least he made a step forward to 20th place.

The 1998/99 season brought another quarter-finals at the UK Championship with another win over Doherty. He was runner-up at the time, the world champion and world number one John Higgins was his opponent at the British Open . O'Brien retaliated for the semi-final defeat the year before and moved into his first Main Tour final with a 6-5 win. There he fought an even fight with Anthony Hamilton to the score of 7: 7. Then he won two frames in a row for the only rankings win of his career. Even if he was eliminated from Tony Drago 4:10 at the World Cup in the first main round in the Crucible , he made a jump in the ranking to 11th place. An outstanding result like this year was not next year, but he achieved regularly the round of 16 and the quarter-finals at the Welsh Open . At the World Cup , he was directly qualified for the main tournament for the first time. And for the first and only time he made it to the quarterfinals there with victories over Chris Small and Stephen Lee . There he then lost significantly to Mark Williams , who then became world champion. In the world rankings he rose two more places to 9 and thus reached the highest position in his career.

Up and down in the 2000s

2000/01 was not as successful as before. He lost the opening game four times in ranking tournaments, only in the UK Championship he reached the quarter-finals. Nevertheless, there was an outstanding success, but at an invitation tournament: At the Masters he defeated Mark Williams at the beginning and after two more victories he was in the final. Against Paul Hunter the final remained open until 9: 9, then the Englishman won the decisive frame with 77:44 points. Due to the poor ranking results, O'Brien fell behind and was just able to stay in the top 16. The following year there were five first round defeats, he did not get past the quarterfinals in two tournaments. That was also his result at the Masters . He finally dropped out of the top 16 and could no longer qualify for this most important invitation tournament in the future.

Initially, the Irishman still benefited from the fact that he had to enter the tournaments late due to the world rankings and thus got relatively many points with just one win. In the following two years he reached two round of 16, 2004/05 the round of 32 at the World Cup was his best result. Nevertheless, it only slowly fell back to 41st place. It was then also able to stabilize at this level. At the Grand Prix 2005 he beat the world number ninth Mark Williams and reached round 3, at the 2006 World Cup he narrowly missed the main round after losing the decisive game against Marco Fu, despite having a clear lead in the meantime, 10: 7. He also reached the semi-finals of the Irish professional championship and the quarter-finals of the Masters qualifying event . At the 2007 Malta Cup he again defeated Williams and reached a ranking quarter- finals again and at the World Cup at the end of the season he was at the table again in the Crucible and made it to the round of 16 with a narrow 10: 9 against Barry Hawkins . The upswing continued in the 2007/08 season . After a successful start at the Shanghai Masters with another victory over Hawkins, the final at the Irish professional championship followed, which he lost to Ken Doherty. At the Northern Ireland Trophy he finally defeated world number one John Higgins and with victories again over Hawkins and Ronnie O'Sullivan he reached the final for the second time. But he missed his second ranking win by a 5: 9 defeat against the Scottish Stephen Maguire . With that he improved again to the top 32 for the first time to 24th place. But the following year all ranking tournaments ended at the latest in the round of 32 and when that continued in 2009/10 , he fell again at the end of the season despite Crucible moving in by more than 20 places.

Late successes in the 2010s

In the 2010/11 season , the Players Tour Championship (PTC) was introduced, a series of small tournaments with a reduced number of points for the ranking list. O'Brien coped well with the format and reached the semifinals at the Brugge Open . Otherwise he did not get past the third round in the other tournaments either. The following year he was at the PTC tournament in Gloucester in the semi-finals and at the Paul Hunter Classic in the quarter-finals. For the first time he reached the PTC final tournament , but was eliminated in the first round. At the Shanghai Masters he defeated another top 16 player, Peter Ebdon, and made it to the round of 16. At the age of 40, he was back in the top 32. Other good results followed, such as the round of 16 at the Wuxi Classic 2012 , the Australian Open 2013 and the International Championship 2013 . At the PTC tournament in Gdynia , he was finally in a Main Tour final for the fifth time in 2014, which he lost to Shaun Murphy , and after reaching the round of 16 at the PTC final , he climbed back up to 30th place. And after the quarter-finals at the Shanghai Masters 2014 and two further rounds of 16 at the two German PTC tournaments, he rose by a further three places at the end of the 2014/15 season . In addition, he made it to the finals in his first participation in the World Seniors Championship for over 40s. He defeated, among others, Peter Ebdon, Steve Davis and Ken Doherty and in the end lost to Mark Williams with 1: 2.

The Irishman started 2015/16 with a victory over the reigning world champion and world number runner-up Stuart Bingham and reaching the last sixteen. His first official maximum break was also a particular success . In the Championship League 2016 (Group 6) he scored 147 points in one shot. At less than 44 years of age, he was the oldest player at the time of his first maximum. There was also another round of 16 at a PTC tournament and at the World Seniors Championship. Otherwise there were no outstanding results and after he failed to make it into the last 64 at the World Cup for the first time in 20 years, he fell out of the top 32 again. The following year he won most of his opening games, but did not get past the third round. At the snooker shoot-out 2017 , a special format that was also included in the world rankings for the first time, he reached the second round. The highlight of the season was the World Cup , where he played against David Gilbert for entry into the main tournament. After 0: 4 deficit he turned the game to 6: 4 and still it came to the decider . He won this with 73:46 after 123 minutes, which made it the longest frame in snooker history. For the tenth time in his career he moved into the Crucible Theater, but had no chance against world number one and defending champion Mark Selby at 10: 2. In 2017/18 he made it to the quarter-finals at the China Championship . On the other hand, there were 11 defeats at the beginning, including high-level tournaments such as the World Championship and the UK Championship. It lost many ranking points and ended up outside the top 50 for the first time in 25 years in 2018.

In the season 2018/19 started O'Brien then again with a success at World Open he defeated Luca Brecel out of the top 16, reaching the knockout stages.

successes

Ranked tournaments

Minor Ranking Tournaments ( PTC )

More tournaments

Trivia

Fergal O'Brien and David Gilbert hold the record for the longest frame in professional snooker. In the third qualifying round of the 2017 World Cup, the two played 2 hours and 3 minutes until the frame was decided in O'Brien's favor with 73:46.

swell

  1. ↑ Profile of Fergal O'Brien on CueTracker (as of August 28, 2018)
  2. ↑ Rolf Kalb : Snooker - Murphy gets maximum and title in Poland. (No longer available online.) In: eurosport.de. February 9, 2014, archived from the original on March 2, 2014 ; accessed on February 10, 2014 .
  3. ^ O'Brien Joins 147 Club , World Snooker, February 25, 2016.
  4. ↑ snooker.org
  5. ↑ Results from World Championship Qualification 2016/17 on Snooker.org. Retrieved on January 18, 2020

Web links

Commons : Fergal O'Brien  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME O'Brien, Fergal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish snooker player
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1972