Super Sykes Lifts Junior Tour Title

Oliver Sykes beat Vladislav Gradinari 3-2 to win the fourth English Junior Tour event of the season at the Northern Snooker Centre in Leeds.

• Results

It marked the first English Junior Tour title of the season for Sykes, who has finished top of the series rankings for the last two years.

As one of the eight seeded players, Sykes qualified automatically for the second day while 57 other players competed on Saturday to try and reach the final stages.

Among those impressing in the opening round were event three winner Edward Jones, who topped his group and fired in the weekend’s highest break of 111, and Ellise Scott – who bounced back from defeat in the opening round of the Snooker Shoot Out earlier in the week to top her initial group with a trio of whitewash wins.

There was greater success at the Shoot Out for WPBSA nominees Kaylan Patel and Ethan Llewellyn, who each reached the last 16 of a World Snooker Tour ranking event for the first time, but there was to be no follow up glory for either at the Northern Snooker Centre as both fell in the group stages on Sunday.

Sykes had no such trouble as he dropped just a single frame against Yashnai Parmar, Faiz Majid and Thomas Mcevoy and hit a top break of 102 to secure a place in the knockout stages.

Former English Under-18 champion Daniel Boyes and event three runner-up Jake Crofts each suffered a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Sykes as the 20-year-old reached his second English Junior Tour final of the campaign.

It was to be a repeat of the event two final as Gradinari last defeated Westley Cooper, a recent EPSB Open Series event winner, to reach his third final in four attempts.

The previous final between Sykes and Gradinari went all the way to a deciding frame and this again proved to be the case as Sykes hit a break of 76 in frame four to restore parity.

This time, however, it was Sykes who came out on top in the final frame to secure his first English Junior Tour title of the season.

The fifth and final event of the 2025/26 English Junior Tour season takes place on 3-4 January at the Mill Brow Snooker Club in Widnes. Enter now via WPBSA SnookerScores.