It seems the 2010-11 snooker season has so far been a season of firsts. Both Tom Ford and Barry Pinches won their first professional titles this year in the new PTC series. Britol’s young-gun Judd Trump is the latest player to join this group.

Judd lifted the Paul Hunter Classic in Furth, Germany, at the weekend to give himself €10,000 in prize money and 2000 ranking points that come with a win on the PTC.

The Paul Hunter Classic, promoted by Brandon Parker, is the first of six European Players Tour Championship events scheduled for the season. All of the PTC and EPTC events count towards the Players Tour Championship finals held in March 2011, where the top 24 players of the money list will compete.

Judd had an excellent tournament beating an in form (twice defending champion) Shaun Murphy 4-2 in the semi final before coming up against surprise package Anthony Hamilton in the final.

Hamilton looked to have the match all going his own way when he led 3-1 in the best-of-7 frame match but the 21-year-old Trump made breaks of 69 and 97 to get back level. In the deciding frame it was breaks of 40 and 52 that were enough to seal victory and his first professional title.

Trump said afterwards, “I beat Shaun Murphy in the semis who had won this event for the last two years. That felt like the big match to me, but then I had to pick myself up again for the final and it wasn’t easy. When I won the fifth frame to get to 3-2 I started believing again, though in the end I got lucky because I fluked two balls in the last frame.”

Nottingham’s Hamilton, runner-up in the 1999 British Open and 2002 China Open, beat Daniel Wells 4-1 in the semi-finals. The next EPTC event runs from September 30 to October 3 in Bruges, Belgium.

The next event on the World Snooker calendar is the Roewe Shanghai Masters that takes place on the 6th-11th September.

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