SLOW START TO THE 21/22 SEASON GETS SLOWER

As you may know or may not, the snooker season has started. However, the "start" was given with yet another edition of the "Championship League".

Indeed we are all a little tired of the Championship League format, having seen so many editions of the event since the beginning of the pandemic.

So much so that the most interesting topic of this Championship League so far has been Ronnie O'Sullivan's last minute withdrawal from stage two after winning his group in stage one. It's been said that Ronnie pulled out following doctor's advise. However, 'The Rocket' made an exhibition a couple days before and some ten days earlier has also withdrawn from the British Open. Opinions have been very divided on social media, and another big controversy has been his replacement. Mark Joyce, second in Ronnie's group in stage one earned a place on stage two. To have a knocked-out player replacing a walkover in a future round is unprecedent as fas as I can remember in snooker, and for it being a ranking event many players were not happy at the World Snooker Tour (WST) decision.

Snooker hits back mainstream next week though, with the British Open on ITV. For each round, the ranking tournament will have a random draw, and as the media well reported this has provided matches between ex-partners Reanne Evans and Mark Allen and 2021 World Championship finalists Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy in round one.

Of course I'm looking forward to these matches and having snooker on ITV again, but the format of play is a bit frustrating. Best of 5s until the last 16, then best of 7s for quarters and semis, and a best of 11 final. Somehow it doesn't feel like the season is actually starting at all.

ITV is not the only positive point about the event though, it'll be held in Leicester, home city of the World Champion, and the tickets are at an unbelievable cheap price. 

It's great to see snooker going to Leicester like that, but I just hope it's not the start of the "best of 5" era in snooker.

We were also looking forward to the inaugural Turkish Masters next month, of course. That one will definitely be a proper tournament. However, setbacks keep being a problem as the tournament was postponed to March 2022.

We'll now see what WST does with the dates that became available from that postponement, but proper snooker might not return until late October.

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