Matthew Couch

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Matthew Couch
birthday 30th June 1974 (age 46)
nationality EnglandEngland England
Nickname (s) The Couchernator
professional 1992-2004, 2005-2007, 2008-2012
Prize money 197,042
Highest break 141
Century Breaks 39
Main tour successes
World championships -
Ranking tournament victories -
Minor tournament victories -
World rankings
Highest WRL place 47 ( 99/00 )

Matthew Paul Couch (born June 30, 1974 ) is an English snooker player who was active as a professional 18 in the 1990s and 2000s. He lives in Scunthorpe .

Career

Beginnings and greatest successes

Matthew Couch first attracted attention when he reached the semifinals of the 1992 English Amateur Championship in the Northern England tournament. In the 1992/93 season he began his career in the professional tournaments that were then still open to all players. Already in the first year he reached the fifth qualifying round in three tournaments, in the third minor tournament of the Strachan Challenge , which was less high-class , he was among the last 128. The following year he also reached the higher qualifying rounds in regular tournaments, including twice the round of the last 96. At the end of the season he got one more round at the British Open and at the World Cup he was also among the last 64 and only just lost 8:10 to Surinder Gill . With that he improved to 135th place in the world snooker ranking.

After a poor start to the 1994/95 season , he made it to the main tournament at the European Open for the first time, where he then lost his opening game against a Belgian wildcard player. Then he achieved better results again in the other tournaments. In addition, he came to a tournament of the subordinate WPBSA Minor Tour, among other things with a victory over the top 32 player Anthony Hamilton the final and then just lost 5-6 against Colin Morton. The following year he lost in the Masters qualification in the semifinals against Matthew Stevens . At the German Open 1995 , the first German professional snooker tournament, he first defeated Cliff Thorburn in qualifying and retaliated against Stevens, but then dropped out in the round of the last 48 and missed the main tournament. It was his best result of the season. In the following year, a placement among the last 48 at the Asian Classic was the best result. He stayed in the top 100 of the world rankings for several years without making any progress.

In the 1997/98 season , the number of professionals was limited to abolish the escalating qualifying rounds. Couch needed four attempts at the QPBSA Qualifying School before he could qualify for the new professional tour. After a season without highlights, he reached the round of 48 at the 1998 World Cup, his best World Cup result. The most successful year of his career followed. At the UK Championship 1998 he reached a main tournament for the first time and after victories over Marco Fu and Michael Holt for the only time in a major ranking tournament in the quarterfinals. He then made it to the round of 16 at the Irish Open and just barely missed his second quarter-finals in a row with 4: 5 against John Parrott . After the season he moved up to 47th place in the world rankings.

Fight for professional status and end of career

In the following years he could not confirm the success. He reached the round of 48 once or twice per season, but otherwise had little to show and when he only made it into the second qualifying round in a ranking tournament in the 2003/04 season , he fell to 100th place after 12 years from the professional tour. That's why he had to play the Challenge Tour the following year in order to regain professional status. He reached the final of one tournament and made it to the second round twice. That brought him 4th place in the Tour ranking, his return in 2005. But there were no results in the following two years either. At the Northern Ireland Trophy 2006 he reached the main field with 48 players, but otherwise he lost at the latest in the second round. This ended his professional career in 2007 for the second time.

Another year followed with qualifying tournaments in the PIOS Tour , the successor to the Challenge Tour. Among other things, a final and a semi-final in the eight individual tournaments brought him to 5th place in the tour ranking and again back to the main tour. The 2008/09 season was again a better season and he reached the third qualifying round three times. At the 2009 World Cup he was in the last 48 for the second time, but like in 1998 it was Joe Swail who clearly defeated him and prevented his entry into the main tournament at the Crucible Theater . The following year was not quite as successful, but both times he was able to extend his professional status via the annual rating.

In the 2010/11 season , the Players Tour Championship (PTC) was introduced with 12 small tournaments across Europe. At first he couldn't get used to the best-of-7 tournaments, but after getting into the main round at the World Open , which was only played in best-of-5 mode, he only got one Week later at the Brugge Open 2010 the final. He defeated Ricky Walden and Fergal O'Brien before losing the final to world number seven and eventual tour winner Shaun Murphy 4-2. As a PTC tournament, however, it brought only a few points for the world rankings and apart from the Shanghai Masters earlier in the season, it never made more than round 2 in the major tournaments. With that he would have lost his professional status, but because of the finals in Belgium he was the best player in the PTC Order of Merit and therefore stayed on the Main Tour.

In the 2011/12 season , Couch was unable to save anything. He only won three games at PTC tournaments and one game at the Australian Open . 88th place was his end-of-season placement, equivalent to his third and final professional farewell. In the following two years he played in a handful of PTC tournaments, but in 2013 he finally retired from professional snooker.

Personal

From 1994 to 2003 Matthew Couch owned the Cottage Beck Snooker Club in his hometown of Scunthorpe , which opened in the late 1970s . In 1998 he founded a sales company for snooker supplies under his own name. Under the name Snooker Loopy , he continued to sell on the Internet beyond the end of his career. He is also registered as the official snooker trainer of the WPBSA .

successes

Main Tour:

Qualifying tournaments:

Other tournaments:

  • Winner of the Hanover Masters 1999
  • Winner of the Swiss Open 2006
  • Winner of the Paul Hunter English Open 2007
    • It was the first edition of the benefit tournament named after the snooker professional Paul Hunter who died of cancer in 2006
  • Finalist of the 3 Kings Snooker Open 2010

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Profile of Matthew Couch on CueTracker (as of November 16, 2017)
  2. ↑ PIOS ranking season 2007/2008 , brownball.de
  3. ↑ Murphy wins in Belgium ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) 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. , Snookermania, October 4th 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.snookermania.de
  4. ↑ Scunthorpe club closes down - demolition work expected to start this summer , Scunthorpe Telegraph, April 5, 2016
  5. ^ Mr Matthew Paul Couch , entry on Endole Suite, accessed November 16, 2017
  6. ↑ Gallery - Matthew Couch , Craftsman Cues, accessed November 16, 2017
  7. ↑ Euro Player Profile - Matthew Couch (England) , World Snooker Club 147, accessed November 16, 2017
  8. ↑ Hannover Masters - The Final , Snooker News, August 29, 1999
  9. ^ Sports facts , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 14, 2006
  10. ↑ Harry Lime: Neil Robertson . ISBN 978-0-244-46171-3 , pp. 29 ( google.de ).
  11. ^ English Open re-named for Hunter , BBC, April 19, 2007
  12. ^ Matthew Crouch player statistics ( Memento from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), 3 Kings Snooker Open
personal data
SURNAME Couch, Matthew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Couch, Matt (short form of name); Couch, Matthew Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English snooker player
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1974