The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
FAMILY GUY: Mark Gray is pictured with his 11-month old daughter Sophia and his Daventry winners’ trophy.
Spalding and District Snooker League ace Mark Gray is now ranked seventh in the European pool rankings after a strong showing in Austria over the weekend.
The former snooker professional, nicknamed ‘Granite’, placed fifth at the third event on the Euro Tour Series at Sankt Johann.
A whopping 160 entries contested the event, which was played in a double elimination format down to the last 32 – then straight knockout to determine the winner.
Gray, who is based in Bourne, survived a few scares en-route to the latter stages.
He cruised past Holland’s Jelle Kijlstra 9-2 in his opener, before coming from 4-0 down to defeat German Tobias Bongers 9-6.
He then lost a thriller with Spaniard Juan Carlos Exposito 8-9, but bounced back to see off Mohammed Alhosani (UAE) 9-3 and secure a place in the final 32.
There he saw off Kuwait number one and world number 18 Omar Alshaheen (9-5) and Polish number one Mateusz Sniegocki (9-2), before losing 9-5 to Greek’s top player Nikos Ekonomopoulos. Having come back from 5-0 down to trail 6-5, Gray had no luck in the final frames and had to be content with fifth.
Gray said: “All in all it was a good tournament and I’m pleased to have moved up the rankings.”
Prior to his efforts in Austria, Gray was on winning form in a tournament held at the Daventry Court Hotel.
The Bourne Snooker Centre ace pocketed £1,100 as he clinched the title at the second event of this year’s GB9 Championship Series to stay top of the UK rankings.
Gray beat world number four Karl Boyes, from Blackpool, 11-5 in the final, having come back from 4-1 down to beat Darlington’s Phil Burford 9-5 in the last four. In earlier rounds he beat Colin Connor (Norwich) 9-3, Dave Hopkin (Nottingham) 9-3, Dave Evans (Kettering) 9-4, Adam Benn Smith (Sunderland) 9-0 and Jez Graham (Devon) 9-3.
