Ng On-yee, BBS, MH, was born in Hong Kong on 17 November 1990 and grew up in the working-class district of Sham Shui Po. She took up snooker at 13 in the billiard hall where her father worked, encouraged by him because she was drifting at school and spent much of her time on online games; he coached her himself. She practised five to six hours a day, at times cueing through a small ring placed on the table to sharpen her accuracy, and played her first international event at the 2006 IBSF Women's Championship in Amman, Jordan. She won the Hong Kong Under-21 Snooker Open in 2007 and 2008 against male opponents, left school at 17 to focus on the game, and later returned to study, gaining a higher diploma in accounting from HKU SPACE in 2016. Since 2010 she has been supported by the Hong Kong Sports Institute as an elite scholarship athlete. In 2009 she beat ten-time Australian Open winner Kathy Parashis 5-1 to become the youngest-ever IBSF women's world champion, at 19, and retained the title in Syria the next year by beating Jaique Ip 5-0. She won women's six-red team gold at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games with So Man Yan and Ip, plus singles bronze. Her first ranking win came at the 2012 Northern Championship, where she did not drop a frame, and in 2013 she took the inaugural IBSF World Six-red title in Carlow, Ireland. At the 2015 World Ladies Snooker Championship in Leeds she beat ten-time defending champion Reanne Evans in the semi-final and Emma Bonney 6-2 in the final, becoming the first Asian woman to hold the title; she regained it in 2017 by beating Evans 5-4 and Vidya Pillai 6-5, and won a third time in 2018. That February she became the first Asian woman to top the women's world rankings, holding the position until April 2019, when she also won her third IBSF world title. Her highest competitive break, 139, came at the 2018 Australian Women's Open. Turning professional in 2021, she beat China's Wu Yize at the 2022 Welsh Open qualifiers for her first professional match win. In the 2024/25 season she won the US Open, the Belgian Open and the British Open, taking her career tally past twenty ranking titles, and in 2026 she returned to world No. 1 after reaching the semi-finals of the World Championship in Dongguan. She has received the Medal of Honour and the Bronze Bauhinia Star.
Ng On-yee became the first Asian woman to win the World Women's Snooker Championship in 2015, went on to take the title three times and reach world No. 1, then moved onto the professional tour and won the US, Belgian and British Opens, widening what Hong Kong athletes can imagine achieving.
Achievements
- 2009 · Beat Kathy Parashis 5-1 in the final of the IBSF Women's World Snooker Championship to become, at 19, the youngest-ever women's world champion.
- 2015 · Beat Reanne Evans in the semi-final and Emma Bonney 6-2 in the final of the World Ladies Snooker Championship in Leeds, becoming the first Asian woman to take the title.
- 2018 · Won the World Women's Snooker Championship for a third time and became the first Asian woman to top the world rankings.
- 2024 · In the 2024/25 season won the US Open, the Belgian Open and the British Open, taking her tally past twenty ranking titles.