Congratulations to Andrew Higginson who has defeated reigning world champion John Higgins 4-1 in the final of the PTC5 event to take his first professional title and the top prize of £10,000…
Category: Players Tour Championship
PTC5: A Long Day (and Night) In Sheffield…
A day that began at 9am for Sheffield continues to unfold as due to a couple of long matches combined with a spot of strange scheduling, at the time of writing (2:05am), there are two matches yet to reach a conclusion. Click below for a review of the day so far…
PTC5: Friday Round-up
Today saw the professionals enter the action at PTC5 in Sheffield as the top half of the draw was played through to the last 16. Click below for updates on a day which at the time of writing has already seen six members of the world’s projected top 16 tumble out of the tournament…
World Snooker Publish PTC8 Draw
As a few of you may have spotted yesterday, World Snooker have now published the draw for the last 128 of the PTC8 event in Killarney with the amateur draw to follow in the coming days. The best place to view that is here at WWW Snooker.
Again it should be noted that with 96 professional entrants, World Snooker have not seeded any of the five amateur players who finished inside the top 64 on the Order of Merit after PTC4.
This has proved to be a controversial point as whether or not those amateurs should be seeded, to me the real issue is that the Players Pack has at best proved to be unclear, at worst misleading and it is clear that even the players themselves do not know where they stand. Whether behind the scenes or in public this is a grey area that requires clarification.
To view the important dates for your diary this year and all of the published draws so far, please view my calendar page here.
PTC5 Seedings Issue: World Snooker’s Response
Following on from yesterday’s post highlighting the issue of amateur pair Jak Jones and Eden Sharav not being seeded for the upcoming PTC5 event despite finishing inside the top 64, World Snooker have today explained their logic via the medium of Twitter. Click below to see what they said and my thoughts…
PTC5 Draw and Schedule, Clean Sweep for Pros in Shanghai
A couple of newlines for you today as World Snooker have released the draw and playing order for the PTC5 event in Sheffield while it has been a perfect day for the eight professionals in action in Shanghai this morning as all came through their wildcard clashes. For the full results from today please click here to view my updated drawsheet.
Going back to the PTC5 draw though, does anyone know why Eden Sharav and Jak Jones have to play qualifying matches despite having finished inside the top 64 on the Order of Merit after PTC4 which I had understood would secure them a seeding?
EDIT: It seems that they way the last 128 draw is made up, 97 of the places have gone to the professionals with the top three amateurs taking the total to 100. The final 128 places will go to amateur qualifiers. Is this fair? At first glance it does seem to be harsh to have denied both Eden and Jak one of the seeded spots despite both having finished inside the top 64 on the Order of Merit after PTC4.
A more comprehensive report from Shanghai will follow when the real action gets underway tomorrow…
PTC Update: Absentees List, PTC7 Turns Pink
Further to my post a couple of days ago linking to the entry lists for the PTC5-9 events I have now had a chance to look through them and identify the professional absentees, while there is also important news on both PTC6 and PTC7 to bring you…
PTC5-9 Entry Lists Published
A quick note to let you know that World Snooker have today published the entry lists for the next five PTC events which you can view by clicking here. I have not yet had time to go through the entry lists and play the game of ‘spot the absentees’ but it is noticeable that the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan, Ding Junhui, Mark Selby and Mark Williams have opted out of the final event to be held before the first mid-season seedings cut-off point, the PTC6 in Poland.
Also absent is Stephen Hendry in a move which could well cost him a place at the Masters in January.