Leone Crowley Wins WSF Junior Championship
01/23/2025 02:08 PM
Leone Crowley defeated Kaylan Patel 5-0 in the final of the 2025 WSF Junior Championship to earn the title and a two-year World Snooker Tour (WST) tour card.
Crowley, from Cork, came through an international field of 57 cueists from 22 countries to win the biggest title of his career to date.
The 18-year-old makes history as the first ever player from the Republic of Ireland to win the prestigious title and earns professional status for the first time in his career.
He made an impressive start to the tournament by topping his group with a clean sweep of victories and just two frames dropped en route to the knockout stages.
This fine form continued as Crowley, who regularly practices at Mark Allen's snooker camp in Belfast, whitewashed Scotland's Ayaan Iqbal before showing his battling qualities to overcome Poland's Michal Szubarczyk in a deciding frame having trailed 3-2.
His place in the title match was secured by overcoming Amaan Iqbal 4-1 in a hard fought contest that last for almost four hours on Wednesday evening.
There he faced England's Patel, who was aiming to become only the second Englishman after Stan Moody to lift the WSF Junior Championship crown.
Following a trio of group stage victories, Patel had defeated fellow countryman Adam Abbas (4-1) and O'Shay Scott (4-1) to reach the last eight.
He looked certain of a semi-final place when he stormed into a 3-0 lead over Riley Powell, but the Welshman rallied to win three frames in a row and force a decider. Patel, however, held his nerve in the final frame to compile a break of 50 before earning his final place with an impressive 4-0 defeat of the highly-rated Zhou Jinhao from China.
Unfortunately for Patel, he was unable to repeat this form in the title match and Crowley raced into a 4-0 lead at the mid-session interval in relatively comfortable fashion despite not compiling a half-century break.
Crowley kept his cool after the break and took the fifth and decisive frame by a scoreline of 73-24 to complete the biggest victory of his life.
"I feel very good. I have been playing the game for the last ten years and I've put a lot of hard work into this so I am just happy to have made my Dad proud and myself too. My family back home were all watching it so I want to thank them for all the support" said Crowley.
"I 100% believed that this was possible – if you don't believe then you're not going to achieve your goals. I was feeling good coming into the game. It was scrappy but there was some good safety play and I felt confident when I was in front that I would get over the line eventually."
Looking ahead to the next two years, Crowley said: "I want to gain experience and hopefully I can stay on the tour. I don't want to say too much but hopefully, after those two years, I will stay on – that's the goal. My hero is Judd Trump, so I would like to play him."
The WSF Open Championship takes place on 24 January – 1 February and can be watched live on the WPBSA YouTube channel and WSF Facebook page.
The post Leone Crowley Wins WSF Junior Championship appeared first on WPBSA.
