Lee Walker

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Lee Walker
Lee Walker
birthday 11th February 1976 (age 44)
place of birth Newbridge
nationality WalesFlag of Wales (1959 – present) .svg Wales
professional 1994–2006, 2007/08, since 2014
Prize money £ 376,168 (As of August 31, 2020)
Highest break 140 ( European Open 2004 , Q; Q School 2011 - Event 3 )
Century Breaks 44 (as of August 31, 2020)
Main tour successes
World championships -
Ranking tournament victories -
Minor tournament victories -
World rankings
Highest WRL place 42 (2000)
Current WRL location 85 (as of August 17, 2020)

Lee Walker (born February 11, 1976 in Newbridge ) is a Welsh snooker player . He turned pro for the first time in 1994 and has since played on the Main Tour with interruptions .

Career

Beginnings and first professional years

Lee Walker was born and raised in Newbridge , South Wales. At the age of five he started snooker at his own children's pool table. He later often played with his brother at a nearby snooker club and competed in junior ranking tournaments. He was twice Welsh and once British youth champion. In 1993 he won the Welsh Masters and became a professional snooker the following year at the age of 18.

Already in his first season in 1994/95 he reached the round of 128 at the Thailand Open. At the World Cup he just missed it after an 8:10 defeat against Englishman Darryn Walker. The following year he reached the top 128 three times. He then made a big leap forward in the 1996/97 season . At the Asian Classic and the German Open he made it to under the last 64 and at the Snooker World Championship in 1997 he not only reached a main round for the first time, but also reached the quarter-finals. He defeated players like Dennis Taylor , Dave Harold and Alan McManus . With that he improved to the top 80 of the world rankings.

Outstanding results in the following years were top 32 placements at the 1998 World Cup and German Open, the round of 16 at the Welsh Open and the 1999 UK Championship . In the world rankings Walker made slow progress and was in 2000 at number 42. In the following two years he could not keep the successes, only at the Benson & Hedges Championship , the qualifying tournament for the Masters , he achieved greater success and was in 2001 in the quarterfinals . However, the tournament was not part of the world rankings and so it fell out of the top 80 again by 2003.

The 2003/04 season began with a round of 16 at the LG Cup , which he was able to repeat in the Masters qualification. At the Irish Masters he reached the last 32, before he finished the season with another round of 16 at the 2004 World Snooker Championship , after beating Mark Selby and Stephen Lee , then number 9 in the world rankings, among others . But what followed was a completely screwed up season almost exclusively with defeats at the beginning, including a 0:10 against Ricky Walden at the World Cup . After he had risen to number 58 in the world rankings, the Welshman had to fight to stay on the main tour in 2005/06 . However, reaching the last 32 at the Grand Prix was his only success of the season and so he lost his professional status again after 12 years.

Amateur years and late tour returns

Lee Walker at the Paul Hunter Classic 2018

In the following year, Walker took part in the PIOS Tour to qualify again and reached the finals twice and once each semi-finals and quarter-finals in the eight tournaments. He finished third in the PIOS classification and thus returned to the Main Tour. But only in the Northern Ireland Trophy he was able to advance in the 2007/08 season , which was too little for another professional season. After a one-year break, he tried to qualify again in the following two years via the PIOS tournaments and, after their abolition, via the Q School . At the Q School 2011 he failed in the decisive game against Simon Bedford . In the same year he also took part in the amateur world championship , where he reached the final and lost just under 9:10 to Hossein Vafaei . He missed a second opportunity to qualify for a game this year.

During his amateur days, Lee Walker won two titles with the team and was European Champion with Wales in 2009 and 2011. In 2014 he reached number one in the amateur rankings in Wales and then entered the Q School again at the age of 38. In the second tournament he won his group and according to the new rules he had the Main Tour ticket for the next two seasons. In the 2014/15 season , he was able to win his opening match four times, including that at the Welsh Open against world number three Ding Junhui and at the World Cup against David Morris . The following season he started as number 83 in the world rankings . In the second year he reached the last 32 at the International Championship and the China Open with a victory over Ding Junhui, but the other larger tournaments were less successful. At the end of the season he did not get past 74th place in the ranking and would have lost his professional status again. However, he had scored points in almost all tournaments of the Players Tour Championship and as the second-best non-qualified player in the Tour ranking, he was again given a two-year right to start.

In the 2016/17 season , his first better result was the Round of 32 at the Paul Hunter Classic . Otherwise he was always eliminated in round 2 at the latest. That only changed in the new year when he defeated Neil Robertson and Graeme Dott at the Welsh Open and made it to the round of 16. At the Gibraltar Open he reached round 3 and in round 3 at the World Cup , he narrowly missed the finals due to an 8-10 defeat against Noppon Saengkham . He had thus created a better starting position than two years earlier. In the next season, however, he needed a certain start again before he beat world number one Mark Selby 5-2 at the World Open and made it to the last sixteen. This was followed by a lot of initial defeats until the Gibraltar Open came. After 3 wins he met Anthony McGill , a top 16 player, in the round of 16 and won 4-2. He had set his best career result, but then defeated another top young player with Kyren Wilson 4-0 and reached his first semi-final in a professional tournament. But he lost that to Cao Yupeng . Unfortunately it was a tournament with little value for the ranking list and after two defeats in the second round at the end of the season he missed 64th place by a few places. Of the players from 65th place onwards, he was one of the best players in the one-year ranking and this time that was enough to extend his professional status.

Walker started the 2018/19 season with two qualifying wins and at the Paul Hunter Classic he repeated his second-best tournament result by reaching the quarter-finals. After that, however, there were two more defeats.

Lee Walker as a trainer

While playing as an amateur, Walker also qualified as an official snooker trainer (level 2) of the WPBSA in March 2011 . He not only works in his home in South Wales, but also does youth work in Sweden and Hong Kong. He continued his coaching activity in his professional years from 2014.

Lee Walker is close friends with three-time world champion Mark Williams, also from Wales . After 2015, they also had a joint coach in Steve Feeney, who also looked after Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stuart Bingham .

successes

Ranking tournaments:

Other professional tournaments:

Qualifying tournaments:

Amateur tournaments:

  • Welsh Youth Champion (2 ×)
  • UK Youth Champion
  • European Team Champion with Wales (2 ×)
  • Final: World Championship ( 2011 )

swell

  1. ↑ a b c Profile of Lee Walker on CueTracker (as of November 6, 2018)
  2. ^ A b Gareth Hughes: Lee Walker - Jan 2001. Newbridge-Online, January 2015, accessed July 28, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Results of the European Team Championships: Dariusz Goral: Sankt Petersburg 2009. (No longer available online.) Snooker.pl, archived from the original on June 6, 2015 ; accessed on July 28, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. / Dariusz Goral: Malta 2009. snooker.pl, accessed on 28 July 2015 . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / snooker.pl
  4. ↑ Lee Walker. In: worldsnooker.com. World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association , accessed November 6, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Mark Williams woke up this morning in bed with a man and has no idea how , Cathy Owen, Wales Online, May 8, 2018
  6. ^ Ronnie O'Sullivan's coach Steve Feeney on his innovative methods giving the Rocket another gear , Lawrence Ostlere, Independent, November 2, 2018

Web links

Commons : Lee Walker  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Walker, Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION welsh snooker player
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Newbridge , Wales