World ranking: 17
Last five seasons:15-35-377-UR-UR
Date of birth: 08-01-78
Lives: Happy Valley, Hong Kong
Turned professional: 1998
Ranking tournament victories: 0
Last season�s prize money: �83,810
Career prize money: �241,680
Highest tournament break: 143

Marco Fu is snooker�s latest star of the east and has taken over from Thailand�s James Wattana as the standard-bearer in Asia.

His rise up the Embassy World Rankings has been nothing short of meteoric.

Just two years after turning professional, he had leapt from 377th to 15th and claimed a place among the game�s elite.

He has since slipped back to seventeenth after an indifferent 2000-2001 season and will be hoping to improve on that this year.

Fu first shot to prominence in the 1998 Grand Prix. He won seven matches - Ronnie O�Sullivan and Peter Ebdon were among his victims - to reach the final, where he was beaten 9-2 by Stephen Lee.

He also fought his way through four qualifying rounds to reach the televised stage of the 1999 Embassy World Championship, where Wattana proved his master with a 10-8 victory.

Voted WSA Young Player of the Year in 1999, Fu will be disappointed with his performance in the 2001 World Championship where he was defeated in the first round by Chris Small.

His best performance last season was in the UK Championships where he narrowly missed out on a quarter-final place losing to eventual finalist Mark Williams..

Fu is happy with the progress he has made over the last few years but his aim remains to capture that elusive first ranking title.

�Now my aim is to win a world ranking tournament,� he says.

He was educated in Vancouver but now commutes between Hong Kong and Stirling.