Congratulations to world number 19 Martin Gould, who has tonight defeated Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen 104-0 to win the 2013 Snoot Out tournament in Blackpool…
Following a nail-biting opening match against Rory McLeod early in the tournament, Martin added the scalps of Mark Joyce, Nigel Bond, Andrew Higginson and Michael Holt to reach the final, where he saw off the yellow-shirted Allen with two scoring visits to take the £32,000 top prize.
Having already taken his first title carrying ranking points earlier in the season at the UKPTC3 event in Gloucester, Martin will now be hoping to repeat his success in the major events over the coming months, while for Mark it has nevertheless been a positive weekend, which has seen him earn £16,000 for his efforts.
All in all, the event was as to be as expected, though it must be said that whether by accident or by design, generally there were more exciting matches than a year ago, Martin’s opening round win against Rory McLeod being right up there, as well as the first-ever ‘blue ball shoot out’ between Ricky Walden and David Gilbert.
While I would not want these sort of events to become commonplace on the snooker calendar, there is little harm in it once a year and clearly there were a number of fans and players alike, who had a great deal of fun in Blackpool.
Back to the real action on Wednesday though, as the venue stage of the brilliant German Masters kicks off in Berlin.