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Oliver Sykes Continues English Junior Tour Dominance
Oliver Sykes defeated Vladislav Gradinari 3-0 at the Landywood Snooker Club in Walsall to make the perfect start to the new English Junior Tour season.
Sykes, who finished top of the English Junior Tour ranking list last season after capturing four of the five event titles, continued where he left off by securing the victory in Staffordshire.
The two-day event saw 67 cueists aged under-21 competing for the title. The eight ‘elite’ seeded players, which included eventual finalists Sykes and Gradinari, were seeded directly into the final day as Saturday saw the remaining 59 competitors battling it out for 12 remaining places.
Kaylan Patel was the in-form player of the opening day as he topped his group with a clean sweep of whitewash victories, while English Under-18 and Under-16 Championship runner-up O’Shay Scott was also among those who booked their place in the concluding day of action.
Sunday saw a further group stage take place as six of the eight elite players reached the quarter-finals with only Scott and 16-year-old Ethan Llewellyn surviving from the opening day.
Eventual champion Sykes had competed on the World Snooker Tour as an EPSB nominee for the BetVictor English Open just 24 hours earlier and looked in strong form as he stormed through the group stage without dropping a frame.
In the last eight, the eventual champion had to dig deep against Scott as his 15-year-old opponent took him all the way to a decider before Sykes eventually got over the line.
From there, it was smooth sailing for Sykes as he whitewashed Jake Crofts in the semi-finals before comfortably overcoming Gradinari in the title match with breaks of 62, 61, 54 and 52.
Event 2 of the English Seniors Tour will take place on 19-20 October at the Frames Sports Bar in Coulsdon. Entries are open until 11 October at 12:00.
