Watch out for the young players! Or don't?

We're still in the aftermath of Ronnie O'Sullivan's sixth World Championship win. But the World Champion didn't kickstart his new season ideally. 

He lost in the second round (had a bye in round one) of the European Masters to Aaron Hill. It's just fitting that an 18 years-old rookie would beat Ronnie after he said that the level down the rankings is so low that he'd "have to lose an arm and a leg to fall out of the top 50". Well, the 18 years-old who's the European under-18 and under-21 champion had made a century in the final frame of his first round win against Andy Hicks and followed his win over Ronnie with a win over Matthew Stevens in round three. He then lost in the Last 16 to Yan Bingtao. Yan Bingtao of course, is the best under-20 player in the World having already established his place in the top 16 and won a ranking tournament. 

There are quite a few young players coming along right now. Yan leads the way among a lot of young talent coming from China. Irishman Hill leads the new UK generation. 24 years-old Lukas Kleckers from Germany and Alexander Ursenbacher from Switzerland lead the European young players.

But although Hill had this mini break-through reaching the last 16 of the European Masters, Yan Bingtao is the only player under-27 threatening the big guys like Mark Selby, Judd Trump and Ronnie O'Sullivan himself at the top. Is this due to lack of talent? Cetainly not. Here are two reasons on why I think the gap between the incoming players and the ones at the top is so abysmal:

They need opportunities. World Snooker Tour always talk about how much opportunity they're giving players because of the amount of money available and because everyone on tour starts the ranking tournaments at the same stage everywhere except the World Championship. But although the flat 128-men format is interesting and provides some headlines when upsets happen, it doesn't work for the low ranked players. They are always drawn against top players and apart from the pressure of playing them, there's also the pressure of having to win to keep on tour and earn a living. For players on their 20's this can be mentally draining and just too difficult to handle. See, rookie Iulian Boiko from Ukraine just celebrated his 15th birthday but his gift is being drawn against world number one Judd Trump and world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan in his first two matches. It's great opportunity for them to be on TV and play their idols, yes, but reflect about them having to beat these players on a regular basis! The upsets are good for headlines, but if you want to help and prepare the young players, let them play between them before earning matches against the big guys.

They need time. You must be either a generational talent to breakthrough like Yan Bingtao, or people need to be behind you even through tough times that you are certain to have on tour before you fulfill your potential, like Kyren Wilson had when he fell off the tour. The average age of the current top 16 is 36.9 and the average age of the last 10 world champions is 35.7. The youngest world champion for the last 10 years was 29 years-old (Judd Trump in 2019). In other words, you're not supposed to reach your peak before you're 30, because you just don't have enough experience to compete with those players at their 30's and 40's who are still fit to compete at the highest level.

With all that into account, please just don't fall into this "snooker lacks young talent" thing. We have a lot of young talent, but life is just too difficult for them on tour.

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