By Elliott West
“When I was going through the struggles on the tour like most players do, I never gave up but that’s pretty much down to my parents who support me so much and believe in me when pretty much no one else does. They are the main reason [behind my success] to be honest.”
Introduction
Jak Jones is a snooker player that has impressed me in recent years and especially in this week’s British Open. This Welsh player from Cwmbran, born in 1993 and now 28, first emerged as a professional player when he won the 2010 European Under 19 Snooker Championship in Malta, defeating Anthony McGill 6-4. Someone who has dropped off the tour between 2011-2013 and again at the end of the 2017/18 season. He currently has his highest ranking of 65.
A Teenage Dream
By today’s standards, Jones first became a professional snooker player at a very early age, 16 years old to be precise. His first season wasn’t very memorable, only able to win one match in his attempts to qualify for the seven ranking events, playing additionally in all the PTC events, leaving him ranked 94th at the end of his debut season.
Things didn’t really improve for Jak until he won the Scottish Amateur Open in the 2012/13 season off the tour, beating Elliot Slessor 4-2 and John Parkin 4-0 to claim a place back on the tour. It would take until the 2014/15 season for Jones to make inroads, qualifying for the Australian Goldfields Open and almost qualifying for the World Championship, losing in the last qualifying round to Ryan Day 6-10 after being 6-6 in the match.
A similar bag occurred in the 2016/17 season, surviving one round at the Riga Masters, beating Jamie Cope 4-3 before losing to Mark Williams 4-0. A good run followed at the English Open, beating Brandon Sargeant and Elliot Slessor and Ding Junhui, a player 105 places above him. He went on to lose 4-3 to Anthony Hamilton. At the International Open, he saw off Jimmy Robertson 6-4 before being eliminated by John Higgins 6-2. He also got to the fourth round of the Snooker Shootout.
Before another fall off the tour at the end of the 2016/17 season, Jones won the European Snooker Championship in 2016, defeating Jamie Clarke 7-4 in the final and regained his place on the tour by entering the infamous Q School. A player who once got to the final of Junior Pot Black in 2009, losing to Ross Muir 0-1, Jones has made an impressive start in the British Open, beating Lyu Haotian 3-2 and will now play Mark Davis in round 2.
Jak bases his recent success on a move to Sheffield to the Ding Junhui Academy, leaving his beloved Wales to try a different style of practice, from solo to playing other players at the Academy. The change has been noticeable, lifting his mental strain and allowing him to concentrate on the game without the distractions of normal life. In Sheffield, he doesn’t know anyone, so he can just get up, practising and playing snooker all day.
