Llewellyn Lifts Junior Title at Landywood

Ethan Llewellyn defeated Vladislav Gradinari 3-1 at the Landywood Snooker Club to win the first English Junior Tour title of the 2025/26 season.

• Results

The 17-year-old came through a record field of 73 players in Walsall to win his maiden title on the English Junior Tour.

As one of the eight ‘elite’ seeded players, Llewellyn received a bye into Sunday while the remaining 65 cueists competed on Saturday for 16 additional places in the final day.

There were a number of impressive performances on the opening day as James Pears, Jacob Corbett, William Hurley, Toby Smith and Yashnai Parmar each notably  qualified without dropping a single frame in their initial groups.

Llewellyn reached the knockout stages comfortably after a clean sweep of group stage victories over Hurley (2-1), Oliver Li (2-0) and Nicholas Ayers (2-1).

A whitewash win over Ryan Spratt then set up a quarter-final meeting with Oliver Sykes, who had finished in top spot on the English Junior Tour ranking list for the last two seasons.

Llewellyn started strongly with a break of 85 and never looked back as he completed an impressive 3-0 victory before overcoming this year’s WSF Junior Championship runner-up Kaylan Patel in a deciding frame to reach the title match.

Reigning English Under-18 champion Gradinari was his final opponent after the 16-year-old had ended the run of Shaun Liu in the last four.

Liu, aged 15, had been in impressive form on the final day – not dropping a frame en route to the last four and hitting back-to-back century breaks in his quarter-final success over William Thomson.

A top break of 44 proved to be enough for Gradinari to earn a whitewash victory and place in the final, however, as he looked to win the second English Junior Tour title of his career.

Llewellyn kicked off the final in style with a contribution of 99 and quickly moved within one of the winning line by taking the next.

His opponent briefly rallied, halving the deficit with success in the third, but it was Llewellyn’s day as he took the decisive frame by a 58-47 winning margin to secure his maiden English Junior Tour crown.

Event two of the 2025/26 English Junior Tour season takes place on 25-26 October at Woodside Snooker Centre in Dereham and entries close on 17 October – enter now via WPBSA SnookerScores.