Australian Goldfields Open

Australian Goldfields Open

Tournament information
Venue	Bendigo Stadium
Location	Bendigo
Country	Australia
Established	1979
Organisation(s)	World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association
Format	Ranking event
Total prize fund	$425,000
Current champion(s)	Stuart Bingham

The Australian Goldfields Open is a snooker ranking tournament. Australia had previously hosted the 1971 and 1975 World Snooker Championships, as well as several other high profile snooker tournaments and in 1979 the Australian Masters was established. There was an attempt to turn the event into a ranking tournament in 1989 but the sponsorship fell through so it was staged in Hong Kong instead, as the Hong Kong Open, which incidentally became the first ranking tournament to be staged in Asia. The Hong Kong event was discontinued after just one year, but returned to Australia in 1994 as the Australian Open. The tournament reverted to being called the Australian Masters for the following season, but was dropped from the calendar after the 1995 event. In 2011 the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association resurrected the event under the Australian Goldfields Open name and added it to the 2011/2012 calendar.

Winners

Year	Winner	Opponent	Final score	Season
Australian Masters (non-ranking)
1979	Perrie Mans	Ian Anderson		1979/80
1980	John Spencer	Dennis Taylor		1980/81
1980	Tony Meo	John Spencer		1981/82
1982	Steve Davis	Eddie Charlton		1982/83
1983	Cliff Thorburn	Bill Werbeniuk	7–3	1983/84
1984	Tony Knowles	John Virgo	7–3	1984/85
1985	Tony Meo	John Campbell	3–2	1985/86
1986	Dennis Taylor	Steve Davis	3–2	1986/87
1987	Stephen Hendry	Mike Hallett	371–226	1987/88
Hong Kong Open (ranking)
1989	Mike Hallett	Dene O'Kane	9–8	1989/90
Australian Open (non-ranking)
1994	John Higgins	Willie Thorne	9–5	1994/95
Australian Masters (non-ranking)
1995	Anthony Hamilton	Chris Small	8–6	1995/96
Australian Goldfields Open (ranking)
2011	Stuart Bingham	Mark Williams	9–8	2011/12