Stephen Maguire
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| Born |
13 March 1981 Glasgow, Scotland, UK |
|---|---|
| Sport country |
 Scotland
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| Nickname | On-Fire Livewire Maggi The Merlin of Milton |
| Professional | 1998– |
| Highest ranking | 2 (2008/09–2009/10) |
| Current ranking | 25 (as of 18 December 2016) |
| Career winnings | £2,098,743 |
| Highest break | 147 (3 times) |
| Century breaks | 352 |
| Tournament wins | |
| Ranking | 5 |
| Minor-ranking | 3 |
| Non-ranking | 2 |
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Stephen Maguire (born 13 March 1981) is a Scottish professional snooker player. He has been a professional snooker player since 1998, ranked in the top 16 consecutively for 11 years from 2005 to August 2016, reaching as high as 2nd for two of those seasons. He has won five major ranking tournaments, including the UK Championship in 2004. As a prolific break-builder, Maguire has compiled more than 350 century breaks, including three maximum breaks.
Maguire began his career on the UK Tour in 1998, at the time the second-level professional tour. He almost qualified for the 2000 World Championships, leading eventual semi-finalist Joe Swail 9–6 in the final qualifying round before losing 9–10, but first served notice of his true potential by knocking out Stephen Lee in the first round of the UK Championship in 2002.
Maguire was the surprise winner of the 2004 European Open. Ranked 41 in the world at the time, he beat well established top-16 player Jimmy White 9–3 in the final. It was in that same season that he qualified for the World Championship for the first time, losing 6–10 in the first round to Ronnie O'Sullivan, but O'Sullivan admitted to being impressed by Maguire's performance and tipped him to be a future World Champion.
The start of the 2004/2005 season saw Maguire establish himself as one of the game's brightest talents. He performed well at the season opening Grand Prix, reaching the quarter-finals, and things improved further at the British Open in Brighton. Maguire defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan 6–1 in the semi-finals, leading O'Sullivan to claim that 'he had never seen anything like that on a snooker table before' and also rated Maguire as 'probably the best player in the world at the moment'. Although Maguire lost the final 6–9 to his compatriot John Higgins, he more than made up for it at the next event, the UK Championship, snooker's second biggest tournament.
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