Stephen Maguire
| Name | Date of Birth | Country |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen Maguire | 13-03-1981 | Scotland |
Name : Stephen Maguire
Highest Ranking : 2 (2008/09 and 2009/10)
Current Ranking : 24 (After 2017 Players Championship)
Highest Break : 147 (3 times)
Century Breaks : 346
Stephen Maguire (born 13 March 1981) is a Scottish professional snooker player. He has been a professional snooker player since 1998, ranked in the top 16 consecutively for 11 years from 2005 to August 2016, reaching as high as 2nd for two of those seasons. He has won five major ranking tournaments, including the UK Championship in 2004. As a prolific break-builder, Maguire has compiled more than 300 century breaks, including three maximum breaks.
Maguire began his career on the UK Tour in 1998, at the time the second-level professional tour. He almost qualified for the 2000 World Championships, leading eventual semi-finalist Joe Swail 9–6 in the final qualifying round before losing 9–10, but first served notice of his true potential by knocking out Stephen Lee in the first round of the UK Championship in 2002.
Maguire was the surprise winner of the 2004 European Open. Ranked 41 in the world at the time, he beat well established top-16 player Jimmy White 9–3 in the final. It was in that same season that he qualified for the World Championship for the first time, losing 6–10 in the first round to Ronnie O'Sullivan, but O'Sullivan admitted to being impressed by Maguire's performance and tipped him to be a future World Champion.
The start of the 2004/2005 season saw Maguire establish himself as one of the game's brightest talents. He performed well at the season opening Grand Prix, reaching the quarter-finals, and things improved further at the British Open in Brighton. Maguire defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan 6–1 in the semi-finals, leading O'Sullivan to claim that 'he had never seen anything like that on a snooker table before' and also rated Maguire as 'probably the best player in the world at the moment'. Although Maguire lost the final 6–9 to his compatriot John Higgins, he more than made up for it at the next event, the UK Championship, snooker's second biggest tournament.
Maguire played some superb snooker on the way to the final, beating the likes of Mark King, Mark Davis, Stephen Lee, Ronnie O'Sullivan and Steve Davis. Davis described Maguire as 'inspired', while O'Sullivan was again rich in his praise for the youngster, claiming 'he could rule the game for the next ten years'. In the final, Maguire blazed past David Gray with an emphatic 10–1 win.
The rest of the season was an anti-climax of sorts however. He lost against defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan 9–10 in their World Championship first-round match, despite having led 9–7, but he still moved up to #3 in the world rankings.
Maguire and John Higgins lost in the final of the 2015 Snooker World Cup to Chinese youngsters Zhou Yuelong and Yan Bingtao. He reached the semi-finals of the first ranking event of the year by thrashing Judd Trump 5–1 at the Australian Goldfields Open, but he lost 6–1 to Martin Gould. Maguire began his fourth round match against Neil Robertson with a 118 break, but it was the only frame he could win in a 6–1 defeat.[67] He was knocked out in the quarter-finals of the German Masters 5–1 by Graeme Dott and the first round of both the Welsh Open (4–3 to Martin O'Donnell) and the World Grand Prix (4–0 to Higgins). Maguire failed to qualify for the PTC Finals after finishing 42nd on the European Order of Merit. This meant that he needed results to go his way and have a strong run at the China Open to avoid having to qualify for the World Championship. Four wins to the semi-finals saw Maguire accomplish this, but he was whitewashed 6–0 by Trump. Despite achieving automatic qualification for the World Championship, Maguire stated that he felt embarrassed at how he was unable to motivate himself for the event after losing 10–7 to Alan McManus in the first round. He finished a campaign outside of the top 16 for the first time since 2004, as he was 18th.