Global Snooker
With the increased amount of activity at the moment it seems logical to revive my old Rankingswatch feature. Click below to see the movers and shakers following this weekend’s PTC event.
Also note that I have now revised my provisional rankings page following your comments which are much appreciated!
The Provisional Top 16
The biggest climber inside the top 16 was unsurprisingly event winner Mark Selby who leapfrogs Scottish duo Graeme Dott and Stephen Hendry to move back inside the top 10. It was a similar story for Shaun Murphy who despite losing out to Mark in the second round, edges ahead of Ronnie O’Sullivan and Ding Junhui up into fourth place.
Despite his latest defeat to Bjorn Haneveer in the first round, Ryan Day remains in 15th place thanks to nearest challengers Peter Ebdon, Jamie Cope and Liang Wenbo failing to make the latter stages in Sheffield.
17-32
It was a good weekend meanwhile for the likes of Gerard Greene, Mark Davis, Stuart Bingham and Ricky Walden who all won at least three matches to consolidate their positions inside the top 32. This was reinforced by the fact that the four players between 27th-30th all failed to score and so have slipped back slightly.
The battle for top 32 places is in fact arguably more exciting than that for top 16 places at the moment with the likes of Judd Trump, Martin Gould, Mike Dunn and Andrew Higginson separated by barely 500 points. It just goes to demonstrate that while the traditional ranking events will remain crucial, a couple of wins at one of the PTC events could prove the difference between being seeded for the final qualifying round for the World Championship for example, a significant advantage bearing in mind the calibre of some of the players ranked in this bracket.
33-48
Unsurprisingly it was this weekend’s runner-up Barry Pinches who was to prove the most significant mover in this bracket, climbing five places to 42nd on the list. With his points from a last 16 run in the 2008 Bahrain Championship due to come off at the second mid-season revision, Barry’s heroics at the Academy have been a welcome boost and will hopefully see him moving back in the right direction again on the rankings list.
The Rest
Of the rest it has been a good week for some of the players further down the list, in particularly Jimmy Robertson, Andrew Pagett and Ant McGill whose quarter-final runs have seen them climb up the list to the fringes of the top 64. In all honesty though I think that more than the ranking points, the confidence that McGill and Pagett in particular will have gained from defeating some of the players that they have could prove invaluable as they look to remain on tour.