Feb 27, 2018
At first glance, with her youthful features and thick glasses, Ng On-yee could be mistaken for a schoolgirl, rather than a world number one sportswoman.
But Ng has just become the first Asian woman to top the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker (WLBS) rankings.
The 27-year-old replaced long-time number one Reanne Evans of England last week as she reached the quarter-finals of the British Open in Stourbridge.
Three other female snooker players from Hong Kong are also among the world’s top 15.
“Snooker has always been a male sport in Hong Kong,” Ng On-yee said of one of the territory’s most successful sports.
“I think I have proved that women can play snooker very well, too – even with big glasses,” she said with a big smile.
Snooker has become a well-known sport in the city of seven million, especially after the success of Marco Fu Ka-chun, who currently ranks number nine in the world.
In recent years, Hong Kong has shown itself to be a nurturing ground for ground-breaking female athletes. Two years ago, fellow Hong Konger Chan Yuen-ting became the world’s first female coach leading a men’s professional football team to a top-tier league title.
Like father, like daughter
Ng fell in love with snooker as a teenager, when her father took his youngest, video games-obsessed daughter to an amateur competition he participated in.
What got her attention first was the waistcoat and bow tie that her father wore. “I thought that was cool, so I asked my dad to teach me how to play because I wanted to wear that outfit, too,” Ng told BBC Chinese. “It all started from there.”
The fact that her father was an amateur player and worked at a local snooker parlour meant that she could train there for free, and also meant she avoided the bias against the sport held by many local parents, who see billiard rooms as a place where gangsters hang out and fight – as depicted in movies.
