INVITATIONAL EVENTS RULING SNOOKER SEASON
The snooker season has, at last, gathered pace. The Hong Kong Masters played last week was a complete success - home hero Marco Fu had beaten four-times World Champion Mark Selby in round 1/quarterfinals before he scored a 147 in the deciding frame of his semifinal against another four-times World Champion in John Higgins.
In the final, he met snooker's biggest box office: Ronnie O'Sullivan. It could've been a fairytale ending to Fu's already remarkable run in his home event, but the all-time record snooker crowd of 9,000 fans will have left the building with no complaints having been able to see a masterclass performance from O'Sullivan - a wonderful century break sealed a 6-4 win for "The Rocket" after Fu had comeback from 5-2 down.
It's another very successful "new" event on tour (although the Hong Kong Masters had been played in 2017, but discontinued since then). However, a few people - including players - were not very happy at the news that even more invitational events were to be held this season. New additions to the calendar, the Hong Kong Masters and the World Mixed Doubles (8-players field in both) joined other invitational events such as the Masters and the Champion of Champions.
There's also the ITV series (World Grand Prix, Players Championship, Tour Championship) which are ranking events but are limited to 32, 16 and 8 players respectively on each.
In addition to those, the World Championship remains as ever in its format of 16 seeds being joined by 16 qualifiers at the main stage - a format that will be used for the UK Championship this season again, after a decade of the "flat 128" format being used for what is snooker's second biggest ranking event.
We can definitely see a trend there. Although the "flat 128" format is still used for many ranking events, it's not an unanimity anymore.
I personally do like to see different formats, venues, and cities giving each tournament its own distinctive identity, but the "flat 128" format - particularly when matches are best of 7 or 9 frames up to the semifinals - have a characteristic of seeing most top seeds fall before the deep stages of tournaments, and even though we all love underdogs, surprising results and great stories, it stops being special when it happens all the time.
Don't get me wrong, whatever the format I have massive admiration for players that can make it to the deep end of tournaments. However, fans do create affection for the top players, and some tournaments do suffer for the lack of them - that's reflected in viewing figures, crowd attendance, and even on social media repercussion. That's why those "elite" events that only have 32, 16 or even 8 players on it, are guaranteed success. From the point of view of the promoters, you want players like Ronnie, Neil, Judd and Selby to be involved - ideally for longer than a couple days.
There's a counter argument of "you have to earn it", which is the main defense of the "flat 128" draw against the "tiered" system. But here are some recent numbers:
The 2022 British Open had a "flat 128" draw. Players were randomly drawn opponents after each round as well, which made up even more surprising results. Only two top 16 players made it to the last 8 (and they were drawn each other). Summing up the quarterfinals (best of 9), semifinals (best of 11) and final (best of 19) a total of 9 century breaks were made.
In the Hong Masters, an 8-players invitational event, summing up the quarterfinals (best of 9), semifinals (best of 11) and final (best of 11) a total of 18 century breaks were made, which included a 147 in a semifinal decider.
The 2021 UK Championship, of course part of snooker's Triple Crown, saw only two top-10 ranked players get to the last 16. The final was played, for the first time ever, by two non-top 16 players at the time. Again, I've massive respect to all the players that went deep in the UK Championship, and recognize that they played really well all the way through (both finalists have won further ranking events since), but the fact is that the format of the event changed back into seeding the top 16 right after that "uncharacteristic" outcome in the 2021 edition.
Again, it's clear that there's a trend of the tour trying to cut off that "unpredictable" element from at least most of the events - likely motivated by the promoters, which is understandable given what's been hereby described.
This scenario might well take a different path when the Chinese events finally return to the calendar, but I don't see the "flat format" gaining popularity given the success of the "top-players-exclusive" events. This might, though, make a huge impact in the tour structure over the next few years:
Given the prestige of events that do not even count towards the rankings (i.e. Hong Kong Masters, Champion of Campions, Masters), sometimes the world ranking might not tell the true story.
The Masters, for an example, is clearly the second most prestigious event on tour. However, the £250k banked by Neil Robertson, which would make him world number one, does not count towards the world ranking - where he's now third. Yan Bingtao, who earned the same amount of money for his triumph in 2021, would be top 6 in the world right now if those were ranking points. As it is, he sits 15th trying to hold onto his top 16 spot. Champion in 2020, Stuart Bingham nearly had to play qualifiers for the World Championship later that season and his runner-up, Ali Carter, actually had to play qualifiers and ended up missing a spot at the Crucible that year.
In a more recent example, Marco Fu's £50k earned in Hong Kong would've put him very close to breaking into the top 64 again (after five years away from the tour due to well reported reasons). As it is, he currently sits 100th in the world ranking.
Having prestigious events not counting for the rankings can make it look weird at times, but is there a way of making these events "ranking worthy"? I understand that, for that, everyone on tour should have a shot at it. But the ITV series found a way around that.
Maybe a "wildcard event" for the lower ranked like the Masters used to have, or "tiered qualifiers" like the World's and UK Championships have, would suffice to give those invitationals a "ranking status"? As it is now, seeded players would naturally not earn points for their "first round" defeats, which would grant that they're not "protected" by the system and that lower ranked players could still climb up over them in the rankings.
There are indeed many options around that matter, but given the lack of "new" interest in the "flat" format I foresee changes being made on the tour's current structure. Since now (as opposed to when the tour expanded to 128 players in 2013) we have established amateur circuits organized by the WPBSA and the WST (WSF and Challenge Tour), I wouldn't be surprised to see the main tour reducing. In that scenario, lower ranked players would indeed lose their TV time, but there's reason to believe that the sport beyond the top players is being taken care of. The World Snooker Federation just completed 5 years since its inception as WPBSA's branch to take care of the amateur game, and WST recently announced that every tour player will earn a minimum guaranteed £20k.
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