It was always going to be a tough ask to reach the last 16 here for David Gray and so it has proved as he has lost out 5-1 to former professional Tian Pengfei in the wildcard round. Not only has he crashed out of the China Open, but he has now lost his main tour place as a result…
This is because despite reaching the TV stages out in China, due to a poor couple of seasons he has slipped down from 49th position in the rankings to 65th – outside of the all-important top 64 places which guarantee survival. Furthermore due to his poor season, he is also outside of the top 8 players outside of that 64 on the one-year list, so fails to stay on the tour via that way too.
It is really an amazing turn of events for a player who back in 2004/5 was ranked inside the top 16 and in 2003 won his only ranking event title at the 2003 Scottish Open. I saw him recently at the World Championship qualifiers and in flashes you could still see some of that undoubted talent that took him to those heights, but they were few and far between as he missed a number of easy pots and allowed his opponent Jin Long in to take advantage.
His match today was not on television but his opponent Tian Pengfei appears to have played really well, knocking in breaks of 81, 60 and 36 on the way to a comfortable win. Although the livescores have crashed at 4-1, shortly afterwards Eurosport’s David Hendon has confirmed that Tian did indeed go on to win so I can only assume that it did finish 5-1. Edit: I can now confirm that it was indeed 5-1.
So what next for David? He could drop down to the PIOS and attempt to find his way back on to the tour that way, or who knows, because of his talent and stature in the game, perhaps he will be awarded one of the invitational spots that the WSA will have at the end of the season. Time will tell, but at just 30 years old surely he has something left to offer the game…