Sixteen-year-old Thurston Grixti and 18-year-old Duncan Pisani will fly to Zurich on Wednesday to take part in the Swiss Open.

There will be 22 professional players taking part in this tournament among them Ireland’s Ken Doherty. Two other players in the World Snooker Association top 16 are Stephen Lee (No 9) and Mark King (No 16). The only aim of the two Maltese youngsters is to gain experience and prepare for the forthcoming European Under 19 Snooker Championship in Prestatyn, North Wales, in the first week of April.

Although the Swiss Open is not a World Ranking tournament, it has a total prize money of £10,000 pounds. The tournament will be held in Zofingen, about 50 kilometres west of Zurich.

The two Maltese youngsters have already taken part in another professional tournament last March when they took part in the Baltic Cup in Latvia. There, they managed to win some important frames against famous professional players.

In the Baltic Cup, Grixti lost 1-3 to John Dickson of North Ireland and compiled a break of 54, while Duncan Pisani lost with an identical score of 1-3 to Patrick Einsle and Roy Stolk.

During the same tournament, another Maltese youngster, Shawn Agius, lost to Lee Richardson 2-3 after leading 2-0. Those were encouraging results and, in fact, when they participated in the European Under 19 Snooker Championship few days later, all the three Maltese youngsters qualified from the group stages by winning no fewer than 11 games to reach the top 32.

The national Under 17 team composed of the same players also won an international match against Austria by winning 60 frames and losing only 12.