Alfie Burden, who has been making great progress in his fourth year as a snooker professional, lines up alongside the game's giants in the World Championships next month.
It's the first time he has made it to the Crucible, Sheffield, for the final stages, after earning a place in the last 32 with a fine 10-3 win over Rob Lawler in the final qualifier at Telford on Friday.
Now Alfie's attention will be focussed on BBC TV's Grandstand on Saturday when the first-round draw is made.
"Obviously, I want to avoid the likes of Stephen Hendry, Ronnie O'Sullivan, John Higgins and John Parrott in the early rounds," he said.
"But I feel I would have a chance of beating any of them."
In the 19-frame qualifying match against Lawler, Alfie, 6-3 up at the interval, polished off his opponent in splendid style by taking the first four frames of the evening session in just 35 minutes.
Last November, Burden (22) of Kenton, was ranked only 122nd, before causing a few upsets in the Grand Prix at Bournemouth, reaching the last 16.
Following a fine win over world-ranked Gary Wilkinson, which featured a 143 break, Burden claimed another significant scalp, knocking out Nigel Bond who had won the Regal Scottish Masters a fortnight earlier.
That hoisted Alfie more than 40 places in the world ratings to 80th, and he's looking to cause a few more surprises at Sheffield to earn a slot among the leading 64.
That would give him an automatic entry into the top eight tournaments and guaranteed earnings of £15,000, with the prospect of more to come.
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article