Vinnie Calabrese continues to dominate the Australian amateur snooker scene. Yesterday, he beat Daniell Haenga, to become Australian Champion again. The event is part of the Asia Pacific Q-Tour, a path to the professional tour. Vinnie is a close friend to Neil Robertson, who rates him highly. However Vinnie hasn’t got much success during his previous stints on the main tour1.
Calabrese Extends Australian Open Reign at Mounties
Vinnie Calabrese has defeated Daniell Haenga 6-2 to win the Bob Hawke AC Memorial Australian Open Snooker Championship for a fourth successive year at Mounties, Sydney, Australia.
Victory for the popular 39-year-old means that he has now won 24 consecutive matches at the prestigious event since October 2023, with his four titles moving him into a tie for second place on the all-time list with Shawn Budd, behind only seven-time champion Steve Mifsud.
The win will also see him leap to the top of this season’s Q Tour Asia-Pacific rankings ahead of Hassan Kerde, with Vinnie having also claimed victory at the season-opening West Coast International back in June.
The defending champion dropped just two frames en route to reaching the quarter-finals stage, where he would produce arguably his best performance of the week in scoring breaks of 65, 94, 58, 65 and a match-clinching 136 – the highest break of the tournament – to overcome Steve Mifsud on Saturday evening.
On the final day he completed the Mifsud double with a 5-3 success against James, to book his place in the title match for a fourth straight year. There he would await New Zealand born Daniell Haenga, who reached the final for the first time since 2019 following a drama-filled week in Sydney.
Having earned two comfortable wins to progress to the last 32 stage, Haenga then won three consecutive deciding-frames to progress to the final, most notably recovering from 4-1 down to former Oceania champion Cale Barrett in the semi-finals, to win 5-4.
He was not able to repeat the feat in the final, however, as Calabrese claimed the opening frame on the black on his way to establishing a 4-1 lead, before eventually closing out a 6-2 victory with top breaks of 86, 65 and 43 to further cement his place in Australian snooker history.
The Q Tour Asia-Pacific will conclude with the staging of the Dr Clem Jones AO Qld Open Snooker Championship in January 2027.
Daniell Haenga has Māori ancestry. The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian population of Aotearoa. Aotearoa is the Māori name for NewZealand , and it means “Land of the Long White Cloud”. I’m very happy when see someone from the “native” populations doing well and getting recognition. Every person, no matter their origin, the skin colour, their gender or any other innate characteristic, should be respected and valued on their own merit and achievements only. It’s not always the case, far from it.
There are probably many reasons for that. It’s not cheap to live as an expat in the UK and you obviously can’t “commute” from Australia. And, it’s lonely place before you manage to build some friendships and trust on and off the tour. ↩︎
