Teenage snooker sensation Michal Szubarczyk is set to be the youngest player to ever feature as part of the World Snooker Championships with the 14-year-old from Poland taking part in the Crucible qualifiers.
Poland’s Szubarczyk will face Scottish potter Dean Young, 23, on April 8 in the opening qualifying in a race to 10 frames.
But Szubarczyk, who will join 127 other hopefuls at the English Institute of Sport, would need to win four consecutive matches to secure a spot at the Crucible and if he can defeat Young the Halifax-based youngster Stan Moody, 18, awaits in round two.
The Eastern European recently won the under-16 and under-18 events that the European Championships in Turkey and also made it to the final of the open age event. On the back of those performances Szubarczyk was nominated for a two-year Tour card that will start from next season.
And three-times world champion Mark Williams has already described Szubarczyk as “one of the best 14-year-olds I’ve ever seen in my life.” He added: “Up there with Ronnie O’Sullivan. Maybe not as good, but not far away.”
O’Sullivan, who was 16, is currently the youngest ever debutant at the Crucible in 1992. The youngest winner of a World Championship qualifier match is Wales’ Liam Davies, who defeated Irishman Aaron Hill two months short of his 16th birthday in 2022.
The actual championships get underway on Saturday April 19 with the final taking place across Sunday May 4 and Monday May 5.
Elsewhere in the qualifying draw China’s Zhao Xintong will make his return after being banned for 20 months over a match-fixing scandal. He had risen to No9 in the world rankings before being suspended.
He did not personally fix a match but accepted charges of betting on a game he knew had been thrown. Fellow Chinese player Yan Bingtao was handed a much tougher punishment of seven-and-a-half years.
Legend Stephen Hendry told the Snooker Club podcast: “Apparently he’s in the top five with the betting for the whole thing. If he gets through then it’ll be really interesting to see how he does. There’s a whole load you could say that you don’t want in the first round of the World Championship.
“It’s different from the late 80s and early 90s where you could forget the first two rounds because you’d breeze through it. But there will be one or two who will be good draws. Everyone else will be tough.”
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