Last updated: 8 Aug 2026 | 7 Views |
On the afternoon of Tuesday, May 19, 2026, inside the Changping Snooker Centre in Dongguan, Guangdong province, the lights over the green baize caught the white cue ball, frozen mid-thought. An 18-year-old from Thailand bent over the table, settling into her stance with the calm of someone who had done this a hundred times before — even though, in truth, she had never stood on a stage quite like this one. Her name is Panchaya Channoi. Thai fans call her "Mind Sakol."
Across the table sat Reanne Evans, the 40-year-old Englishwoman with 12 world titles to her name, a player who had never once lost a world final in her career.
But that afternoon, Panchaya opened with a break of 100 in the very first frame, then closed out the next two to surge 3-0 clear. Evans clawed back, cutting the deficit to 3-2 by the mid-session interval — the moment when the room began to wonder if experience would tell again. Instead, Panchaya answered with the tournament's highest break, a commanding 107, snuffing out any hope of a comeback, before sealing the match with a break of 59 to win 6-2.
What makes the story more than a scoreline is what happened less than 24 hours earlier. On the Monday, Panchaya had successfully defended her World Women's Under-21 title for the second year running. Within a single day, a teenager from Thailand had collected two world titles.
The road to the final was no formality either. She survived a 4-3 quarter-final scare against two-time defending champion Bai Yulu of China, then beat her own compatriot, Nutcharut "Mink" Wongharuthai, 5-3 in the semi-final. In doing so, she became Thailand's third women's world snooker champion, following Nutcharut herself in 2022 and Siripaporn "Baipat" Nuanthakhamjan in 2023 — three names that have quietly turned Thailand into one of the sport's rising powers in under five years.
Before any of this, Panchaya had already won the IBSF World Junior Women's Championship in Romania at just 14, claimed the Thai women's national title in 2023, and finished runner-up at the Asian Women's Championship. Her rise was never an overnight miracle — it was the accumulation of thousands of quiet hours at the table since childhood.
Within the snooker world, fans have started describing her game as sharper and steadier than her years should allow. Some compare her cue action to Mark Allen's. Others have floated a bolder comparison altogether: snooker's answer to Luke Littler, the teenage prodigy who shook up an entirely different sport with a game far beyond his age.
The win came with a £13,000 top prize and a two-year card on the professional World Snooker Tour. But the object that mattered more than any number was the trophy she lifted that night — the Mandy Fisher Trophy, named in honour of one of the pioneers of women's snooker. It is not simply a souvenir of one good night; it is a marker of every generation of women who fought to give this sport a place on the world stage. Now an 18-year-old from Thailand has her name etched onto it too.
Back home, Panchaya has spoken about the barriers Thai billiards and snooker players still face, given the sport's classification under Thailand's Gambling Act. She has called for the law to be reconsidered, so a new generation of players can be properly supported. It's possible that the loudest voice for that change turns out to belong to an 18-year-old world champion.
For Mind Sakol, this trophy isn't an ending. It's the opening line of the next chapter — one she now gets to write as a professional.
