EPTC 1 – Paul Hunter Classic: Furth, Germany 27-29 August 2010

JUDD TRUMP took his first ranking title with a 4-3 victory over Anthony Hamilton in the Paul Hunter Classic, late on Sunday night.

Judd has been in good form this season having won the pro-am Austrian Open a few weeks ago, and went through the weekend beating all players before him. Judd’s first four wins were against Andrew Pagett 4-0, ex-world champion Peter Ebdon 4-2, Michael Judge 4-0 and Anthony McGill 4-2.

He then met his good friend and fellow Grove player Jack Lisowski in the last eight. Jack, finalist in the recent PTC3 event where he beat Mark Selby, also had a good run in beating another top 16 player, Marco Fu 4-3, as well Adrian Gunnell 4-1, Robbie Williams 4-1 and world no 20 Ricky Walden 4-0.

Judd won the quarter final 4-0 and then went on to beat Shaun Murphy 4-2 in the semi-final before beating Anthony and taking the top prize of €10,000.

Matthew Selt lost 4-1 in his first round match to David Norris and Liu Chuang lost at the same stage 4-0 to Stephen Hendry. Liu Song had a convincing victory in round one, beating Joe Jogia 4-0 before losing a tight second round match to Stuart Bingham 4-3.

Zhang Anda lost another narrow match in the first round, losing 4-3 to Marco Fu. Amateur player Chen Zhe made it through to the second round after a good win against Ben Woollaston 4-1, but then lost by the same score to Andrew Pagett in round two.