What it means is that the first half of the tournament has a very PTC feel to it as one half of the draw plays there Last 128 and Last 64 games on Monday, while the other half does the same on Tuesday, with the Last 32 on Wednesday and Last 16 on Thursday all over the best-of-7 frames before Friday's best-of-9 quarter-finals, Saturday's best-of-11 semi-finals and Sunday's final which is played over the best-of-17 frames. All of the top players will be hunting down the title that is currently in the possession of Ronnie O'Sullivan who romped to victory in last year's final against Ding Junhui, but the early stages will have eyes just as much in my view on the players further down the rankings who are hovering around the 64 mark in the rankings (without the insurance of course of being in the first year of a two year card) as they look to avoid relegation from the tour and the main guys to have an eye on are the guys between 60 and 70 in the rankings as these look to be the guys with either the most realistic chance of either dropping outside of the 64, or making into the top 64.
That aside then, lets have a look at how the draw looks for this week, and who I think the main protagonists will be this week:
Quarter 1
Last 128 Draw: (Picks in bold)Ronnie O’Sullivan Vs Vinnie Calabrese
Rory McLeod Vs Andrew Pagett
Ken Doherty Vs Zhou Yuelong
Matthew Stevens Vs Oli Lines
Michael Holt Vs Ashley Carty
Alfie Burden Vs Andrew Norman
Dechawat Poomjaeng Vs Allan Taylor
Marco Fu Vs Ian Glover
Shaun Murphy Vs Steven Hallworth
Jamie Jones Vs Chris Norbury
Jimmy White Vs Barry Pinches
Mark Williams Vs Lu Haotian
Dominic Dale Vs Michael Wasley
Jack Lisowski Vs Li Hang
Mark Joyce Vs Joel Walker
Judd Trump Vs James Wattana
The top quarter sees the likes of UK Champion Ronnie O'Sullivan, German Masters runner-up and Masters champion Shaun Murphy, UK runner-up Judd Trump, home favourite Mark Williams along with several other top players including Marco Fu.
Ronnie O’Sullivan comes into this event in good form as he always seems to be in these days and of course he is the defending champion this week and he absolutely loves playing in the Welsh Open so I think we can expect him to play well and go far in this event. His draw doesn't look to bad at all to get into the quarter-finals, but this is where he is likely to face a very tough game as it could perhaps be Mark Williams, Judd Trump or Shaun Murphy that come up against him and all of these guys are in good form themselves, and they can definetly cause Ronnie a lot of problems, especially over the best of 9 frames. If this tournament was one of the longer formatted events from the start like the UK or World Championships you wouldn't see Ronnie having a problem, but there are enough good players around here to beat Ronnie, if he isn't on his game from ball one, because the time is not there in the short format in order to re-build.
Mark Williams has been the home favourite for many years, and while the supporting cast of Ryan Day and Michael White to name just two are getting stronger below him, Mark remains the highest ranked Welshman for this year at least and he will be determined to do well this week for more than one reason. Not only will he want to do well with plenty of family and friends sure to be in the Cardiff crowd, there is also that extra carrot of breaking back into the top 16 in time to be seeded for the World Championships, and he is very close so if he were to make the quarter-finals or Last 16 this week he would just edge himself that little bit closer. Mark has been playing well this season, and has been unlucky in the last couple of ranking events to have unfortunate Last 32 draws, which is what happens when you are seeded outside of the top 16, and a possible Last 32 meeting with in form Shaun Murphy looks to be another tough game for both this week.
Shaun Murphy is right on top of his game right now in all departments and that is really beginning to show strongly with his match by match and tournament by tournament performances. To start the year by winning the Masters and making the German Masters final only losing out 9-7 in the final to Mark Selby, he'll be absolutely delighted and all of his hard work is beginning to pay off. In fact, Shaun has only lost once in 12 competitive matches since a disappointing UK Championships Last 16 defeat, and one which certainly hurt him, but has ultimately made him stronger. He's going to be one to watch for sure in this tournament, but before we get too far ahead of ourselves it's time to remind ourselves of a couple of things. Firstly, his draw is incredibly tough, especially with the short format of this week, but also his record at the Welsh Open is quite poor as well (without good reason it has to be said) and he has lost in the Last 32 in Wales in both 2013 and 2014, and with a possible third round match with Williams that could easily become three years in a row.
Judd Trump has been playing well pretty much all season, just losing out in the odd tight one here and there, and he has been especially strong in the UK and Europe, going well in most of the Euro Tour events, along with the Champion of Champions and UK Championships where he was runner-up. Even last week when he lost in the quarter-finals of the German Masters it was to the eventual champion Mark Selby in a deciding frame having made a maximum 147 break in the match. In the last year Judd is in the same sort of category as Shaun in that he has turned a massive corner, and since their meeting at the 2013 World Championship meeting the performances of both have been very similar. The fact that they could meet in the Last 16 here is very tough on both of them, and if it does happen I'd have to fancy the winner of that match to go on and have a really strong win in this tournament and possibly make another final.
Quarter Winner: Judd
Trump
Quarter 2
Last 128 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Mark Allen Vs Alexander Ursenbacher
Cao Yupeng Vs Craig Steadman
Ben Woollaston Vs Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon
Mark Davis Vs Lu Chenwei
Xiao Guodong Vs Joe Swail
Matt Selt Vs Ian Burns
Mark King Vs Eden Sharav
Ali Carter Vs Fraser Patrick
Joe Perry Vs Lee Page
Yu De Lu W/O John Sutton
Gary Wilson Vs Zhang Anda
David Gilbert Vs John Astley
Anthony McGill Vs David Grace
Jamie Cope Vs Elliot Slessor
David Morris Vs
Joe O’Connor
Neil Robertson Vs James Cahill
This looks like another incredibly tough quarter to call with the likes of Mark Allen, Mark Davis, Matt Selt, Ali Carter, Joe Perry and Neil Robertson all lining up in this quarter while Ben Woollaston, David Gilbert, Xiao Guodong and Anthony McGill could all provide outside threats in what looks to be one of the quarters of death in this draw.
Neil Robertson Vs James Cahill
This looks like another incredibly tough quarter to call with the likes of Mark Allen, Mark Davis, Matt Selt, Ali Carter, Joe Perry and Neil Robertson all lining up in this quarter while Ben Woollaston, David Gilbert, Xiao Guodong and Anthony McGill could all provide outside threats in what looks to be one of the quarters of death in this draw.
Mark Allen will come into this as one of the big favourites despite a few disappoint defeats in recent times since his awesome run around the late summer and early Autumn time. He failed to qualify today for the China Open, and he will be very angry at losing in the Last 16 of the German Masters when he seemingly had the match won against Shaun Murphy. I've been saying for a while that Mark Allen will is playing well and I expect him to do well in each event, but I now get the feeling that he's just happy to take it easy in the lead up to the World Championships as that is the one he is really targeting and that smaller events like this one will not really be first choice in his mind as a tournament to win.
Joe Perry is certainly a man in good form at the moment having recently won an Asian Tour event and he was unlucky in the German Last 16 to meet a Ronnie O'Sullivan who was on fire. Joe hasn't got a bad draw to try and kick start his tournament and with the short format in the early stages, he could easily find himself in the quarter-finals and from there he'd have every chance of going on and really going for that full ranking title that he desires. Perry is playing as well now as he has done at any point in his career and the improved runs in ranking events along with the victories in Asian Tour events are the fruit of his hard work, and I feel there could be more to come very soon. Matt Selt is easily the most improved player on the circuit this season. The way he is now regularly mixing it with the best is a very positive sign for him. Finals, semi-finals and quarter-finals of European Tour events are showing us that he has the bottle and game to compete at a very high level and some very good stuff against more of the worlds top players at the Championship League just proves that he can cause top players big problems especially over the short format. One good ranking event, in an event like this or the Indian Open where the early rounds are over a very short format, could see him make a big breakthrough and within two to three seasons I think he'll be at least in the top 24 in the world and on the verge of the top 16 if not already in it. This quarter poses a huge challenge for him, but I also think that he is the big challenge now for all of the top players, as the pressure is still well and truly on them to beat players like Selt, and there'll be under even more pressure now that he's showing more of what he can do.
Neil Robertson has had quite a quiet season this time around after what was a very hectic season for him in 2013/2014 as he was going on big runs in events left right and centre and ended up with 103 centuries. This season for him hasn't been great since his Wuxi Classic title and Australian Open final in consecutive weeks at the seasons very start. A recent run to the Masters final has been the only other highlight of the season really and while he has still made some ranking quarter-finals and so on, I think he'll be a little disappointed with how the season has gone so far, but now would be a good time to turn it around with the big one coming, because his actual performance levels have still been good on the whole, it's just that he's thrown in a few more bad ones this season, and he seems to struggle more over the shorter format, which of course is what this tournament is until basically the semi-finals, but my gut feeling is he won't make it that far.
Quarter Winner: Matt Selt
Quarter 3
Last 128 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Ding Junhui Vs Lee Walker
Peter Lines Vs Michael Georgiou
Andrew Higginson Vs Chris Wakelin
Graeme Dott Vs Zak Surety
Liang Wenbo Vs Cao Xin Long
Gerard Greene Vs Daniel Wells
Jamie Burnett Vs Alex Borg
John Higgins Vs Michael Leslie
Stephen Maguire Vs Duane Jones
Kurt Maflin Vs Liam Highfield
Robbie Williams Vs Dave Harold
Fergal O’Brien Vs Sam Baird
Alan McManus Vs Jamie Rhys Clarke
Anthony Hamilton Vs Ahmed Saif
Aditya Mehta Vs Sydney Wilson
Barry Hawkins Vs Scott Donaldson
This particular quarter features plenty of top players in the shape of Stephen Maguire, Ding Junhui, John Higgins and Barry Hawkins. While the likes of Graeme Dott are amongst some of the outside threats, but none of these guys apart from Maguire is on a particularly good run.
Barry Hawkins is struggling badly at the moment just as he did at this stage last season. A Last 32 exit at the German Masters would not have been in his script, and a Last 16 thrashing at the Masters would've hurt but still not quite as much as the UK Championship defeat that Willie Thorne I believe said on commentary could ruin his season, and right now it is really threatening to. He pulled out of the Indian Open qualifiers after the draw was released and proceeded to only finish 5th in the Championship League winners group and his confidence just doesn't seem to be here at the moment, and it's proving very tough to find. It's worth making the point that Hawkins had been a journeyman pro before his big Australian Open breakthrough win, putting him into the top 16, but if he isn't careful he could easily find himself fighting for his top 16 place within two seasons, because you can go down the rankings just as easily as you came up them. He needs a big week soon, and if he could have it in Cardiff I'm sure that would get his confidence back ahead of what is a big period in his season coming up, with a lot of money to defend on the rankings list at the very end of it.
Ding Junhui is also in poor form right now having also lost in the first round of both the German Masters and the Masters, while a Last 32 exit in the UK Championships along with not qualifying for the International Championships and Wuxi Classic means that Ding has failed really to do anything major since last seasons China Open and he could start to slide out of the top four in the world if he doesn't soon turn things around before the end of this season or at the beginning of the next because he really is struggling right now, and one of the things I thought within the first two frames of his match against Joe Perry at the Masters was how poor his body language. He had the body language of a man that was badly struggling and was almost giving up and admitting defeat, and one of his big tells when he's struggling in a match and maybe staring defeat in the face with a bad deficit or in a big pressured situation is his twitching eye, which was out in full force in from the very opening frame of that Masters contest, and that tells me he is really low on confidence and self-belief at the moment and having watched the likes of Murphy and Trump go through the same last season, it is a very tough thing to bring yourself out of as a player, but you just have to keep on plugging away with positive thoughts towards turning it around.
John Higgins is in a very similar boat right now, but the one big thing that has crept in to John's game is his inconsistency. John in his prime was one of the most consistent performers we've had in snooker, but now he is struggling to keep any kind of standard up from one match to the next or even throughout a whole match. Such inconsistency stuck out in the last couple of big events where John was playing very well in the first round of the Masters knocking in centuries and big breaks for fun, and even falling short of a 147 attempt, but then as the match went on he just started to miss a couple of easy balls that you would expect him to get most times, and somehow he managed to lose that encounter. This sort of thing though, is the sort of thing you would expect from someone just starting out in the game, who hasn't had all that many victories against top players, to miss a couple of balls when in amongst them and let their opponent back in the match from a bleak position, not from John Higgins. It's far from me to say that we are witnessing the full decline of the Scotsman because he will fight and dig in there to get himself out of this, but one of the first things you look for when spotting the decline in players is when they start missing a lot more of the balls that they would normally eat up for breakfast.
Quarter Winner: Stephen Maguire
Quarter 4
Last 128 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Stuart Bingham Vs Thor Chuan Leong
Kyren Wilson Vs Robin Hull
Nigel Bond Vs Chris Melling
Michael White Vs Ross Muir
Martin Gould Vs Jak Jones
Rod Lawler Vs Hammad Miah
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh Vs Mitchell Mann
Ricky Walden Vs Lu Ning
Robert Milkins Vs Luca Brecel
Tom Ford Vs Tian Pengfei
Mike Dunn Vs Oliver Brown
Ryan Day Vs Noppon Saengkham
Peter Ebdon Vs Tony Drago
Jimmy Robertson Vs Igor Figueiredo
Marcus Campbell Vs Stuart Carrington
Mark Selby Vs
Alex Davies
This quarter is probably the quarter of death with tough players and great players left, right and centre including recent German Master Mark Selby and Championship League winner Stuart Bingham, along with an in form Peter Ebdon, another couple of big home favourites in Ryan Day and Michael White while Ricky Walden will be fresh and raring to go for this week and the likes of Robert Milkins and even Thepchaiya Un-Nooh who is playing very very well at the moment could prove an enormous threat.
Mark Selby's season wasn't looking great coming into the German Masters and had he have lost his first round decider there to Anthony McGill there I'd be writing here now that the pressure of being World Champion was proving too much for him. However, last week at the German Masters could well prove to be a massive turning point in Mark's season as he took the title, got back up to World number 1, and looks to be playing well as we enter the business end of the season. He has a tough section of the draw here in this quarter, and one good week doesn't necessarily mean that another one will follow here so he'll need to be at the very top of his game this week, as anything can happen in these early stages over the best-of-7's and best-of-9 frames encounters.
Ryan Day is another of the home favourites for this event, and he comes into it straight from a run to the quarter-finals in the German Masters which is another boost to what has been a fine year for Day who has already qualified for the Players Championship Finals later in the season, and bearing that in mind, with this tournament being played over the best of 7 in the early stages like a PTC event, Ryan is a real threat. Hopefully from his point of view, he can finally impress in front of his home crowd and possibly some family and friends too, as his record in his home Open hasn't always been fantastic, but that could all change with one good week this time.
As well as winning the Shanghai Masters earlier in the season, and already winning an AT event to qualify for the Players Championship Finals, Stuart Bingham comes into this week in fine form and with plenty of good match practice under his belt having completed overall victory in the Championship League which is a tough event to gain overall victory in. Stuart also made the final of this event two years ago, and will be looking to try and go one better here this time around with his sights on his first major title in the UK, having won a couple of ranking events abroad. Stuart's form has always been fairly close to it's peak in the last two years, but his draw is tough with a possible Last 32 tie against Michael White staring him in the face. Michael White is growing very nicely as a player and I think that he can certainly cause the top players problems, especially over the short formats like this tournament and the European Tour's where he has reached a semi-final this year in Bulgaria. He should be inspired more than anything by playing in his home event, and I see Michael as a guy now that loses a lot less of the games against players from outside of the top 32, which is always a good marker for a consistent top 32 player.
Ricky Walden has had around a month off since the Masters where he did play very well in his first round defeat to Ronnie O'Sullivan, and his decision to pull out of the Championship League knowing that he also hadn't qualified for the German Masters was in favour of giving himself some nice resting, reflection and hard practice time. Ricky has a good lot to reflect on after winning the International Championship in November and prior to Christmas his form was well and truly where he wanted it, so hopefully a substantial break wouldn't have upset this too much as I can certainly see him going far this week, and maybe going on a big run to secure his first major title in the UK which is the only thing he is really lacking after ranking wins in Asia, European Tour victories and runs to the UK and World Championship semi-finals in the past. If he can find his rhythm and fluency this week he will surely be one of the favourites because he really is a joy to watch when he's on that kind of form as he was in Chengdu.
Quarter Winner: Ricky
Walden
Tournament Runner-Up: Judd Trump
Tournament Winner: Stephen Maguire
It's sure to be a hectic seven days at the Welsh Open, but there will also be some quality snooker on display throughout the week and I look forward to watching it all on a combination of British Eurosport and BBC Wales, depending of course on the TV Schedules. I'll also be blogging throughout the week with updates hopefully on a round by round basis throughout the week, so you can look forward to all of that as well.
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