Young Chinese players occupy two semi-final spots in the 2020 Snooker Championship, which is probably beyond everyone's expectations! In the history of snooker's three major competitions, two non-top 16 Chinese players have entered the top 4 together, which is the first time, and the one who jointly wrote this brilliant new chapter for Chinese billiards is Zhou Yuelong and the other is named Lu Ning.
Compared with Zhou Yuelong, who was born in 1998 and has reached the final of the ranking tournament twice in his career and has also had the experience of ranking 4, 5 quarterfinals and 7 round of 16, although Lu Ning and him officially entered the professional arena in 2014, Lu Ning was born on January 1, 1994, which is a typical late bloomer - in the past many years, he has only reached the semifinals of the ranking tournament, 1 quarterfinal and 4 times of the round of 16 (including one of which was to participate in the China Open as a foreign card in 2012).
Perhaps it is precisely because Lu Ning's "foundation" is relatively thin, so after his continuous progress in this British Championship, the outside world naturally cast more surprised eyes. The official website of World Snooker published an article in the focus news area of the homepage, and made a "popular" introduction to Lu Ning's growth experience.
Lu Ning, now ranked 40th in the world, is a native of Jilin in northeast China. On his way to growing into a professional snooker player, the Oriental Ball King Ding Junhui and Ding Junhui's father helped him greatly. First of all, Ding Junhui's 2005 victory in the Chinese Open, a sensational event in The Chinese sports scene at the time, and the subsequent series of glories that won the British Championship, the Northern Ireland Cup and the defending Asian Games champion, became the key to Lu Ning's life choices - in his early 10s, he began to watch the ball non-stop and embarked on the road of learning ball.
In 2007, when Lu Ning was 13 years old, he was taken by his father to the Ding Junhui Club in Shanghai, where they visited Ding Junhui's father, Ding Wenjun. Father Ding was deeply impressed by the steadiness of Lu Ning's personality and the solid basic skills, and he asked Lu Ning to stay and train and teach him for free. It was also through the encounter with such Bole and noble people that Lu Ning grew up step by step, and finally won the World Youth Championship over the age of 21 in 2013 (he defeated Zhou Yuelong 9-4 in the championship and runner-up finals that year).
Today, there is still a close relationship between Lu Ning and Ding Junhui. Lu Ning's parents run a Ding Junhui billiards club in China, and when Ding Junhui opened a personal branded snooker training base in Sheffield, England, Lu Ning immediately chose Ding Junhui Academy as his training ground - he usually trains with Ding Junhui, the king of Chinese ball and three-time British Championship winner Ding Junhui.
Ronin uses John Parris brand clubs. Recently, he made changes to his clubs and it worked wonders! Before the start of last night's quarter-finals, Ronin blasted a total of 7 strokes to break the 100 in this Year's British Championship, leading the way alongside Melbourne Machine Neil Robertson.
In terms of life, Lu Ning rents with eight other Chinese players in the UK; one of his favorite Sheffield restaurants is called Goodle doodle, which serves Chinese and Malaysian dishes.
As mentioned earlier, Ronin had only reached the top four of the ranking tournament once at last year's Gibraltar Open, but the level and impact of that tournament was far from being comparable to the British Championship, one of the three competitions. His experience tells everyone that he is not ahead of the starting line, and his talent is not the best, but as long as he is willing to concentrate on learning and doing things steadily, he will have the opportunity to succeed and have the opportunity to become an inspirational model. We sincerely wish that this young man with a stable personality and a steady style of play can take the outbreak of this British Championship as a new opportunity in life, continue to work hard and create brilliant achievements.
At the same time, we would also like to thank Ding Junhui and Ding Junhui's father, Mr. Ding Wenjun, for their great contributions to China Snooker, and hope that under the leadership of Ding Junhui, China Snooker can have more rising stars grow into more competitive masters.