JACK Lisowski continued a fine start to the season by booking his place at the Australian Goldfields Open with a 5-2 victory over Dave Gilbert at the Capital Venue in Gloucester.
The 22-year-old Lisowski had hoped for big things from last season after a breakthrough year in 2012-13 that saw him reach the quarter-finals of the China Open and qualify for the Crucible for the first time.
But the left-hander, arguably the quickest player on tour and boasting an aggressive style and risky shot selection that occasionally leaves the purists howling, endured a difficult campaign.
Lisowski failed to progress beyond the last 32 of any of the major ranking tournaments – so a fourth straight victory at the beginning of the current season is a welcome turnaround in fortunes in what has become a very big season in his career.
On Tuesday Liswoski took out Dave Gilbert 5-2 to ensure he will be on the plane heading Down Under at the end of the month, after previous wins over Oliver Lines (5-3) and James Cahill (5-2).
And that follows a 5-3 win over Lu Ning in the first round of the Wuxi Classic that will see Lisowski also take his place in that main draw in China later in June.
Lisowski, who left the Grove Academy in Romford last year to base himself once again in Gloucestershire, will face former world champion Shaun Murphy in Bendigo – unless he is one of those randomly drawn to play a wild-card match.
Elsewhere teenage amateur Oliver Brown tasted a rare defeat, going down 5-1 to Leicester’s Tom Ford after two earlier wins to follow his 5-0 drubbing of Ding Junhui in the Wuxi Classic first round.
Dominic Dale whitewashed Lyu Haotian 5-0, to banish some memories of losing to the young Chinese player when he was just 14 – and Liang Wenbo came through 5-2 over Jimmy Robertson.
Perth’s Scott Donaldson scored an impressive 5-2 victory over Kurt Maflin, and there were also wins for Jamie Jones (5-1 v Mark King), Andrew Higginson (5-4 v Aditya Mehta) and Mark Joyce (5-4 v Ian Burns).
Photographs by Monique Limbos