By Elliott West
“It’s easy to fall off the page”.
Neal Foulds
Introduction
Edinburgh born Ross Muir was a fine prospect when he first stormed onto the professional tour in 2013. A talented junior player, Ross is not only known for his striking nickname, ‘Stenhouse’ a play on words on the Scottish football club, Stenhousemuir but also his trademark wearing of a black glove on his bridge hand when he plays snooker to alleviate perspiration. A keen goalkeeper in his youth, Ross was scouted by Celtic and could have pursued a sport’s career in golf or tennis but instead found snooker through playing pool, a game which he started playing after playing a round of golf at his local golf club.
The Snooker Bug
Aged just ten years old, Muir’s father suggested that his son tried his hand at snooker, a moment when Ross fell in love with the game and has never looked back since. By the age of 12, a week after his birthday, the Scot made his first tournament century, a break of 113, made up of 15 reds and 14 blacks. An achievement made in a snooker club in Broxburn. Toss gained much of his early inspiration from players such as John Higgins, Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan and helped him carve out a fine career as a junior player.
At eleven years old, Muir reached the semi-finals of the Scottish Under-14 National Championship at his first attempt. A stubborn and dogged player, Muir first captured the media’s attention when he played in Junior Pot Black in 2009, taking the title by beating Jak Jones 1-0. A tournament that he qualified for by being the under-16 number one and went to the competition not feeling very confident and commented on the experience, saying:
“I was hoping to win one match, maybe two. I couldn’t dream at all of playing in a tv match at the Crucible, and winning!”
Ross Muir
An experience that to this day he can only remember his walk on, feeling petrified and everything else was a haze not being able to recount any of the shots he played. His best performance during this period came in the 201o Pontins Star of the Future event when he won the under-15s, defeating Adam Bobat 3-1 and the following year he reached the final of the 15-20s bracket, losing to Eden Sharav 0-4, probably the youngest person to achieve this record at this time. He also won the 2013 Scottish Amateur Championship, defeating Dylan Craig 7-3.
Time as a Professional
Since turning professional in 2013, Ross has won two pro-amateur tournaments, 2019 3 Kings Open and the 2019 Rheintal Open, also reaching the final of the 2018 Vienna Snooker Open, losing to Michael Georgiou 4-5. Disappointingly, Muir hasn’t reached the heights he did as an amateur with his highest ranking coming in 2017 when he reached 67 in the rankings. He has made the last 16 of several events including the 2014 Haining Open, 2017 Shootout, 2018 European Masters, 2021 British Open and the 2021 English Open and once made a maximum break, the first of his career at the German Masters’ qualifiers in Barnsley.
His most recent outing came in this week’s UK Championship where he drew Mark Selby. Ross played well in patches but wasn’t able to capitalise on Selby’s early errors. It’s a match that could easily have gone close but when Mark gets going, you have to be able to keep up in this snooker marathon and Ross ended up missing too many balls, unfortunately leading in the end to a 6-2 defeat. A disappointing result for a player who fell off the professional tour two years ago and who is battling to regain his place on the main tour.
What about the Glove?
The main reason for Ross Muir wearing a glove on his bridge hand was when he was younger his hands used to sweat badly making it hard for him to play because his cue became sticky as a result. It was his mother who made the suggestion that he should use a glove to combat this problem and so became his trademark with the Scot swearing that he would never play without a glove again.
