Name: Ding Junhui

DOB: April 1st 1987

Nationality: Chinese

Turned Pro: 2003

Highest Ranking: #9 (2007/8)

Current Ranking: #13

Highest Break: 147x2 (2007 Masters and 2008 UK Championship)

Career Highlights: 2005 UK Champion, 2005 China Open Champion, 2006 Northern Ireland Trophy Champion, 2008 Jiangsu Classic Champion, 2007 Masters Finalist

In short

Following a hugely impressive junior career, Ding wasted no time in making a similar impact on the main tour and became only the third player ever to win three ranking event titles before his 20^th birthday. In recent times however his career appears to have stalled somewhat and it will be interesting to see whether he can recapture the form that took him to those tiles in the near future.

Ding at his best has an excellent all-round game and remarkably has made over one hundred career centuries in just his first five years on the tour. In recent times however it is his temperament that has been called into question following heavy defeats to Jimmy White and Ronnie O’Sullivan in the face of hostile spectators. Since the latter in particular, his form just hasn’t been as consistent as before and he has failed to add to his trophy haul in the last two years. He is surely far too good a player to allow this to continue however and eventually you would expect him to be winning the biggest events once again.

Rise to stardom

Having started playing snooker at the age of nine, by the time he was fifteen he was already skilled enough to win the Asian under 21 championship, Asian Championship and IBSF World under 21 Championship in 2002.

His rapid progress continued on the main tour where having turned professional in 2003, he recorded an impressive win over Joe Perry on his debut at the Wembley Masters before losing in the second round to Stephen Lee in 2004.

His big breakthrough was to come at the 2005 China Open however where as wildcard he remarkably managed to capture his first ranking event title, defeating Stephen Hendry in the final. This victory not only significantly raised his profile, but sent Chinese interest in snooker as a whole right through the roof.

Soon afterwards he managed to show that this was no fluke by winning the UK Championship and Northern Ireland Trophy – all before he reached the age of 20 which was a remarkable achievement, matched only by Ronnie O’Sullivan and John Higgins.

Masters 2007

Returning to London for the Wembley Masters, Ding started the tournament in fine form, making his first career 147 in his opening match against Anthony Hamilton before going on to reach the final where he would face local favourite Ronnie O’Sullivan.

Despite making a strong start to the match, Ding soon found himself overwhelmed by a combination of O’Sullivan’s incredible play and the boisterous, hostile home crowd. This continued to a point where Ding appeared to have all but given up and in fact tried to concede the match with O’Sullivan still one frame from victory. He continued after the mid-session interval however and his concession was attributed to him thinking that the final was a best of 17 match.

This was not the first time that Ding had appeared vulnerable to a partisan crowd however as just three months before during a Premier League match with Jimmy White, he appeared to again struggle to cope with the atmosphere, losing the match 5-1.

Since these defeats Ding just hasn’t looked like quite the same player for whatever reason and has failed to reach the semi-finals of a ranking event in the last 18 months. Although he remains a member of the top 16, Ding’s temperament has also increasingly looked questionable at times and his opponents have been able to take advantage of this.

Again, Ding is surely far too good a player to allow this to continue for much longer and at 21 still has the best years of his career still ahead of him. He could really do with a good tournament sooner rather than later though because the confidence he would gain from that might just be the kick-start he needs to push him to the very top of the game on a consistent basis.

2008/9

Despite victory in the World Series event in Warsaw, Ding’s results in ranking events have continued to be mixed and questions over his temperament do remain. One highlight though was to come at the 2008 UK Championship when in the third frame of his match against John Higgins, he made the second maximum break of his career, becoming only the 11th player to do so.

Because of his previous poor results though, he came into the 2009 World Championship looking like he would need to win in order to keep his place in the top 16, a remarkable situation given how he looked set to dominate the game a couple of seasons ago. Drawn against friend and countryman Liang Wenbo too it was always going to be a high pressure affair and at 8-7 down having lost the previous four frames, it looked like once again Ding would succumb to it and yet another damaging defeat.

What happened next however showed that Ding still has the game and the class somewhere as he rattled in breaks of 111, 91 and 63 to complete a tremendous win. Though he was to lose out to Stephen Hendry in the last 16 just as in 2008, this time he did not give in, he kept smiling throughout and as Stephen was to say after the match, his attitude looked 100% better.

Perhaps that win over Liang is just what he needed to get his career back on track again…

Tournament Victories:

Ranking Event wins (3)

Non-Ranking Event wins (1)

Profile supplied by Matt Huart (http://prosnookerblog.com/)