Shooting stars — why GBA is China's snooker hub

Generation next

Wu represents the new young face of the sport, according to Feng Huanhuan, chief executive officer of F-Sports Promotions.

Her company has organized the annual World Grand Prix in Hong Kong since 2025, and opened the Hong Kong Billiard Sports Academy at Hong Kong's Kai Tak Sports Park.

She believes Wu is a player whose character traits and career represent two decades of the maturation of China's professional snooker players.

The trend started with Chinese snooker pioneer Ding Junhui, who sprung to prominence on the world stage in 2005 by winning the China Open at age 18.

The focus of Chinese snooker's youth training system, is no longer a question of quantity, but one concerning "the sustainability of the careers it churns out".

Ding began formal training at 9 years old. Wu — the first world champion born after 2000 — started around age 7. In 2012, at age 8, he had already shared an exhibition stage with Stephen Hendry, the seven-time world champion, in Lanzhou.

Feng first saw Wu compete in 2025, when he was invited to the inaugural Grand Prix as one of the world's top 32 players.

By then, the just-finished HKBSA was open to players for warm-ups, and Wu was the first to step inside. "From dawn to dusk, he practiced, skipping dinner, asking only if he could come again tomorrow," she said.

She said Wu has "a love for the game — raw, sincere", possesses "natural talent", and has "youth, stamina, a strong work ethic, and mental resilience", all essential qualities for a top player. Moreover, he came up the "hard, but, very representative" way.

Huang Zhufeng, president of the Dongguan Billiards & Snooker Association, is well aware of the risks and rewards young players face in turning professional.

He said Wu came to him in the summer of 2019, asking to shoot practice frames against world-class professionals who used Dongguan as a pre-competition training base before heading to major events across the Chinese mainland.

Huang also oversees the CBSA (Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association) World Snooker Academy's Guangdong branch. He estimates that Dongguan has more than 70 long-term training facilities, with over 500 full-time trainees aged 8 to 21.