the following several years were barren, but in the 1995/1996 season, pearce reached the last 48 at the 1995 thailand open, and the semi-final - a career-best - at the 1996 international open. in the former, he defeated five opponents including robin hull, tony jones and the young stephen lee, before losing 3–5 to joe swail; in the latter, he beat steven de baets, sean storey, robby foldvari, les dodd, mick price, jason prince, david roe and dave harold, setting up an encounter with rod lawler. pearce led 4–2 and 5–3 in their match, but could not prevent a fightback from lawler and a 5–6 loss to the eventual runner-up.