Following his surprising defeat to Michael Judge in the first round of the inaugural Bahrain Championship, Ali Carter has claimed that he “wasn’t really bothered” about the result…
Ali is quoted by Sporting Life as saying:
“I wasn’t really bothered with this event. The UK Championship and the Masters are the two that I am focusing on.
“Obviously I still wanted to win coming here but my focus is on the other two events.”
While it is admirable in some ways that he feels confident enough with his own game to be able to focus on the big BBC events, if he means this then I would be slightly disappointed with his attitude to the event.
Yes the UK Championship and the Masters are certainly more prestigious events, but for a man who has never won a ranking event in nearly ten years as a professional, I’m surprised that he is so unconcerned that a great opportunity to break that duck has passed him by. Also I suspect that the organisers of the event will not be too delighted to see one of the top players talking about the event in this way.
From his point of view hopefully he will perform well in the upcoming events now and prove that this is indeed a one-off result…