Congratulations to Martin Gould who yesterday defeated defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan to win his first professional title at the Power Snooker Masters in Manchester, together with a top prize of £25,000. Click below for a few of my thoughts on the event as a whole…
The success or otherwise of the Power Snooker tournament over the last weekend has been hotly debated between snooker fans as you would expect, with those both for and against the tournament. The discussion on Twitter throughout the course of Saturday was particularly entertaining, though perhaps for the wrong reasons at times!
I will be honest from the off, I barely watched any of the event because from the perspective of a more traditional snooker fan the format simply does not appeal to me and from what I have seen both this year and last year, I have not seen anything that has made me change my mind.
That said, I have no problem with the event being staged and appreciate that there are certain snooker fans who will have enjoyed the format, indeed I couldn’t help but notice on Twitter that those who were at the venue seemed to be genuinely surprised at the intense criticism that was coming its way from the viewers watching on the television. Perhaps the way that the event is presented is something that can be looked at?
The important thing that must be remembered is that the event is not going to replace traditional snooker, if that were the intention then I would have a problem with it. As a sideshow though and an opportunity for the players to earn a little extra prize money and compete on terrestrial TV in the UK (the latter being an increasingly rare opportunity these days), the event doesn’t particularly bother me and hopefully it might help to bring a few more people into more traditional snooker.
Regardless of my feelings on the tournament however, I am really pleased for Martin who is one of the most genuine people you could ever wish to meet and a very talented snooker player to go with it. Despite the increased number of tournaments these days, professional titles remain hard to come by and therefore to not only win his first, but to do so by defeating the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby on the way is a fine achievement under any format.