HOW LEGITIMATE ARE THE TITLES WON IN 2020

Every sport has had to adapt to special conditions in 2020. A lot of sports are even still struggling to comeback.  But snooker has comeback successfully and even led other sports by example, as we spoke in here.

However, as we very well know, in team sports where fans are more fanatic the losers will always raise the argument that there is an asterisk to the "2020 title". I'm not here to talk about football, but in a way, the same thing happens in snooker when fans are discussing. Then, the question to answer is: how affected has the prestige of each tournament been during the pandemic?

To debate that, first we've got to know what changed. In general, the absence of a crowd, which we know that plays a big part in snooker. Also, we had a complete interruption of play in the beginning of the pandemic that broke the rythm of the players as we know it does in snooker. Coverage has changed a lot too, but from a TV viewer how different does it really feel to the old normal or to other sporting events we got used to watch these days? 

Of course, the biggest tournament played during the pandemic was the World Championship. How did you feel about that? As a TV viewer I've got to say that it didn't feel too diferent from other years. The lack of crowd made an impact to it early on, but we just got along with it as it went. That day 15 when both semifinals went to the wire, for example, will forever be marked in the sport's history - and not because of the pandemic by any means. 

And then it was good to have a small crowd in for the final, but even better was that it was possible to play the whole tournament at the Crucible. To me, not having it at the Crucible would be something that'd really put an asterisk on it. In snooker, you just can't think of having a world champion that didn't do it at the Crucible.

As for the Champion of Champions, which is another great example, it was not played in it's usual arena and we know how Coventry played it's part in building up the event's prestige since it's inception to the calendar in 2013. However, I think the main assets the event has are the ITV coverage and the unique draw that the fans love. That remained unchanged, and look how great the tournament was. All the stories it had (break-off-gate, chalk-gate, Allen-Ronnie row, Selby-Robertson outstanding semifinal, Allen beating the world no's 1, 2 and 3 to win) and the tremendous job ITV did on it, combined with the fans' hype about the tournament, made it make headlines everywhere despite the "special circumstances of 2020".

And now, another great example of how snooker events have been handled during the pandemic is ahead of us. Recently, it was announced that the entire UK Championship will be played in Milton Keynes this year. Of course, the UK Championship was already "struggling" in York, due to some structure limitations and format changes that have not made the snooker community happy about the event that wrote a massive part of the sport's history.

However, it's still a Triple Crown event and it still has the BBC. There is no asterisk on it, there is no asterisk anywhere. Despite everything that's going on, everyone is playing under the same conditions and have faced the same problems. How well you handle those and get your results must be reason for even greater admiration for your achievements.

I know that the lack of crowd, in a sport that is as psychological as snooker, is a leveller as the atmosphere the crowd gives to matches adds a lot to the pressure and snooker is all about handling it. But it just makes it be pure snooker, as if you were in the club, but with the whole world watching your table. And if you look at the results this year, it just tells you that the top players are not just great pressure players, they are in a level of their own and dominate in any circumstances.

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