STEPHEN LEE (England)
World ranking: 5
Last five seasons: 6-9-16-31-37
Lives: Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Date of birth: 12-10-74
Turned professional: 1992
Ranking tournament victories: 1
Last season’s prize money: £185,950
Career prize money: £598,001
Highest tournament break: 141
Stephen Lee has made a steady climb up the world ranking list and is now a major threat to the top four.
He won his first ranking tournament during the 1998-99 season - the Grand Prix - compiling two centuries and eight other breaks of more than 50 to defeat Hong Kong’s Marco Fu 9-2 with a performance that oozed class.
English amateur champion in 1992, Lee turned professional the same year and made his Crucible debut in 1995.
He lost 10-8 in the first round to Nigel Bond but was back two years later and, on this occasion, beat Bond 10-8 to reach the last 16.
He went one better in 1999, eventually going out 13-6 to John Higgins in the quarter-finals, but his preparations for the 2000 Embassy World Championship were hampered by a neck injury - the legacy of a car crash two years earlier.
Forced to pull out of the Regal Scottish, intensive physiotherapy enabled him to make it to Sheffield, where he was beaten 13-8 by Fergal O’Brien in the second round.
Lee began last season by winning the Millennium Cup in Hong Kong.
He defeated Stephen Hendry 6-1 in the semi-finals and Ronnie O’Sullivan 7-2 in the final - the first time he had beaten either player.
He clearly has a taste for the Far East as just before Christmas he reached the final of the China Open in Shanghai, although this time O’Sullivan proved too strong with a 9-2 victory.
That was followed by a bumper January. First came a near-faultless display for England as they lifted the Nations Cup for the first time, beating Wales 6-4 in the final, then Lee reached the final of the Regal Welsh, losing 9-8 to John Higgins after leading 8-6.
Regarded as having one of the best cue actions in the game, Lee says: “Obviously, I would like to become world champion and that is something I am working very hard towards.”