Young guns come of age to qualify for German Masters

There's never been a better time to be a young player in the game than now.

With the new-look PTC series and rolling ranking system, it's giving the players of tomorrow a chance to regularly play top professionals in competition snooker.

And the reward for going all over Europe this season is the chance to pick up ranking points, and establish themselves on tour.

Two players who have really stood up to be counted this season are Jack Liswoski and Anthony McGill.



They've been regulars at the events, and have really hit the headlines.

19-year-old Lisowski has been so consistent throughout the dozen events, he's made it to the grand finals in Ireland. But his best success was making one of the event finals.

Also 19, McGill has enjoyed wins against the likes of Scottish counterparts Stephen Maguire and Stephen Hendry, on route to breaking into the game's top 64.

Both players showed they really came of age this week, as they made it through to the German Masters.

Liswowski beat James McBain 5-2, Mike Dunn 5-3 and Marcus Campbell 5-3  to book his place, while McGill got past Jamie O'Neill 5-1, Michael White 5-2 and Tom Ford 5-2.

Thai teenager Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon, also in his first season on the pro tour, made it through the cubilce stages of the competition. He beat Barry Hawkins 5-2 to secure his first ever television appearance likewise.

Elsewhere in qualifying, some of the the usual names made it through. Robert Milkins, Matthew Stevens, Stephen Lee, Ryan Day, Andrew Higginson and Judd Trump made it through.

UK quarter-finalists Stuart Bingham and Mark Joyce couldn't build on their recent successes. Bingham lost out 5-1 to Anthony Hamilton in the final round  and Joyce was knocked out one earlier by Alan McManus, who didn't make the cut either going down to Joe Perry.

Marco Fu may have dropped out of the 16 after the UK Championship but he manged to come through his return to qualifying beating Dave Harold 5-3.

Martin Gould has been a regular at the main events this year, but suffering from flu, he lost in the final round 5-0 to Joe Swail.

One of the stand-out games was Liu Song recovering from 3-0 down to beat Ken Doherty to a place 5-4

Other matches in the final round saw Dominic Dale pip Gerrard Greene to a place and Nigel Bond defeat Liang Wenbo.