A bad season for the World Champion

Bingham is yet to reach another Final since winning the World Championship last May

There's no World Champion weak, and it takes the best player of the World to win the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible. But some plays better than others on winning the World Championship, and very few campaigns at the Crucible impressed me more than Stuart Bingham's last year. He played unbelievable Snooker beating players like Ronnie O`Sullivan and Judd Trump on his way to the Final where he defeated Shaun Murphy in a match of the highest quality.

But, since then Bingham is struggling to win matches, losing several times in the 1st Round of tournaments. Well he's a big amabassador for the game now and as a big fan I want him to reach the latter stage of tournaments, because he represents our Sport and we don't want to have a "poor" World Champion.

A defeat in the 1st Round of the ultimate European Tour in Gdynia, meant that Bingham has failed to qualify to the PC Grand Final, a tournament that will be played in Manchester with live broadcast from ITV. The qualification criteria was: 24 players qualified from the European Tour order of merit list, plus the 2 finalists of the Asian Tour and 6 players from a combined Asian Tour/European Tour's order of merit list. So it's very disappointing to see the World Champion couldn't get one of those places. 

But why can't Bingham perform as a World Champion? Well, I don't think he's the most talented player ever, and he's one of the players who took advantage of the new system planted by Barry Hearn. He plays in every tournament he can and when he wasn't competing, he was practicing, it improved his game a lot and he was as sharp as you can possibly be when he came to the Crucible last year. But after winning the World Championship things changed, he's featuring on TV shows, conceding interviews and he keeps being dragged away because of that media stuff. Himself once admited that he would be practicing more if he wasn't World Champion and had less compromises. 

I think the problem with Bingham is form rather than the "pressure of being World Champion". He could've settled after 10 months I suppose, and reaching the Semi-Finals of The Masters could've given him the confidence back if that was the problem but no, he keeps playing badly after all.

I've heard people saying that he's the worse World Champion ever, as I said there's no weak World Champion and to be fair he played better to win his World Championship than Neil Robertson did to win his, but as a "reigning World Champion" Bingham is really disappointing, however there's still a few tournaments to play yet and he could even be the one to break the "Crucible Curse" being the first 1st time winner to retain the title in the next year. But for this to happen things got to start turning around at the World Grand Prix for him, I don't think he'll simply turn up at the Crucible playing the Snooker he played last year. The only time he had the attitude (attitude, not performance) of a World Champion during a match this season was against Ronnie O`Sullivan at the Semi-Final of The Masters this year, and that migh have been because he was the underdog in a match for the first time since becoming a World Champion.

Don't get me wrong with this, I'm not saying that Bingham would refuse Media invites, that's part of being World Champion but you have to be an ambassador on and off the table, and this season he lost 46% of his 1st Round matches. I just want to see that Bingham from the 2015 World Championship again, because that Bingham is delighful to watch. However he's got nothing to prove to anybody, he has reached at least the Semi-Finals of each of the Triple Crown events, won multiple Ranking Events and he's likely to become World Number One after the end of this season depending on who wins the World Championship, because Selby is likely lose his points from the China Open and the World Championship titles and Bingham (currently No2) will still have his points from the World Title and the Shanghai Masters title. If neither of them win, Bingham will definitely move above Selby and then it's a matter of who wins the title.

And for who says Bingham is a bad player, Joe Johnson won the World Championship in 1986 as a massive underdog, odds on 500/1. Then he made the Final again next year, proving to everyone that it wasn't a fluke. I once heard Johnson saying that when you win the World Championship for the first time and as an underdog, all you want is to play at The Crucible again as a contender this time.

Well, Bingham wasn't even such a surprise when he won the title last year but he might be feeling what Johnson once felt, and you couldn't say that Bingham can't do the same that Johnson did, or even go one step further. 


This week Bingham will be defending his title of the Championship League in Crondon Park, and a successful defence would be a good start for the Englishman. Anyway he's got a tough mission, he enters the Championship in Group 7 and the only way for him to qualify for the Winner's Group and try to win the title is winning Group 7 against the likes of Kyren Wilson and Liang Wenbo.
Group 7 will be played on Monday 29th February and Tuesday 1st March, and the winner joins Ronnie O`Sullivan, Judd Trump, Stephen Maguire, Mark Williams, Mark Selby and Ali Carter in the Winner's Group, that will be played on Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd March; You can follow it through Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook.