Ben Mertens (born 13 October 2004) is a
Belgian professional
snooker
Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...
player. He won the
World Open Under-16 Snooker Championships in 2018.
Career
Ben Mertens is from
Wetteren. When he was 12 years old, he reached the 2nd round of the 2017
EBSA European Under-18 Snooker Championship The EBSA European Under-18 Snooker Championships is an amateur junior snooker tournament. The event series is sanctioned by the European Billiards and Snooker Association and started from 2016.
The inaugural tournament was won by Tyler Rees who d ...
. At the 2018 event he got to the quarter-finals, where he lost to the later champion
Jackson Page.
He won the Belgian U18 championship in 2018. In August 2018 he played in a professional ranking tournament for the first time, and beat
Adam Stefanow in the first round of the
2018 Paul Hunter Classic.
In October 2018, when he was thirteen years old, he won the
World Open Under-16 Snooker Championships, becoming the first male Belgian snooker world champion (
Wendy Jans is a multiple winner of the senior women's world championship).
In January 2019, he defeated
Michael White, then ranked #36 in the world, at a snooker tournament in
Bruges
Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country.
The area of the whole city amoun ...
.
At the
2019 Snooker Shoot-Out, a
ranking tournament for which he got a wild card, he beat
James Wattana in the first round.
In March 2020 he lost in the semi-finals of the
EBSA European Under-21 Snooker Championships to later champion
Aaron Hill.
In July 2020 he defeated
James Cahill in the first round of the World Championship qualifiers, becoming the youngest player ever to win a match in the World Championships. This record was broken by
Liam Davies, who was two days younger than Mertens when he won his first match at the
2022 World Snooker Championship qualifiers.
In June 2022 turned professional after winning the
EBSA European Under-21 Snooker Championships and gained a two-year tour card for the
2022–23 and
2023–24 snooker seasons.
Performance and rankings timeline
Career finals
Amateur finals: 4 (3 titles)
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mertens, Ben
2004 births
Sportspeople from Wetteren
Belgian snooker players
Living people
21st-century Belgian sportsmen