The Snooker Tour Round Table: Who should get a seat?

The current World Snooker tour comprises of 128 professional players 3 of whom are honorary members (Steve Davis, James Wattana and Stephen Hendry) but the question on everyone's lips this week is, is that the right number? Such debate has been sparked by two blogs that 2015 Masters Champion Shaun Murphy has put on his website, calling for the main tour to be shortened to 64 and to then have a Challenge Tour where the other 64 and any added extras would reside. He goes on to suggest that at the end of each season, those ranked between 49 and 64 would be relegated down to the challenge tour, to be replaced by the highest ranked 16 from the lower tour.

The first question you'd ask Shaun is why does he think this? Well, as he explains on his blog, he believes all new players should have to work their way up through the Challenge Tour. He wants to make history of the days where people get invites on to the main tour based on one performance in an amateur or professional event. If players are good enough he says, they will rise through the ranks and onto the professional circuit, because as Barry Hearn said when he changed tournaments to a flat 128 structure "The cream will rise to the top". It always does. When that idea became a reality it was to give lower ranked players an equal chance of winning events as the top 16. Yet, the recent Shanghai Masters event in China saw Kyren Wilson come through 3 qualifying round matches in Barnsley, a wildcard match at the venue and a further 5 games in the main arena to win the trophy, while for the top 16, only 5 wins would've been required to take the trophy home. So on that score the format doesn't matter, if you're good enough - you're good enough.

What would 64 on the main tour provide? Well I think the way that events like the International Championships is formatted basically makes this one clear. 64 players are being taken to the main venue for this one in Daqing, China. Yet, as there are 128 players on tour, every man has to play a qualifying match...in Barnsley!!! As Shaun says in his blog "that doesn't get the juices flowing" and why would it? You're playing a one off match to qualify for an event that's being held on another continent in 4 weeks time.

Then the question continues to come up as to why they don't simply take 128 to each venue? Several reasons are sighted, mainly from the view of  those in charge of the sport that there are clear contractual issues when getting a venue. Not only that, but when it comes to taking 128 to a venue like the UK Championships at the York Barbican or the Welsh Open in Cardiff, that doesn't work either. For example, the first round of the 2014 UK's was played behind closed doors with BBC's TV coverage not beginning until the beginning of the Last 64 round on the first Saturday. Then, as Shaun refers to on his blog, you get matches being played "out the back away from the lights and the action" with 4 tables being found out in the "Sports hall" outside of the main arena. With 64 players on tour alone, these problems would be a lot fewer in number as well.

After reading Shaun's blog in full (which by the way can be found here: http://www.shaunmurphy.net/news/time-for-a-restructure) I've been in touch with Shaun privately to get him to clarify certain aspects of his idea, and i'm sure he won't mind me sharing this on here. I asked him about how players would get on the Challenge Tour in the first place and how many would be taken on and off at a time, like with the main tour. In response to that he said that in the long term "there would be nothing wrong with having a large pool of players on the Challenge Tour". I then asked what he would do about the current Qualifying School system and he said that more than likely he'd keep that as a qualifying system for the Challenge Tour. He's also very clear about that being purely as a qualifying system for the Challenge Tour and NOT the main tour saying: "In my ideas everyone that wants to get to the main tour has to go via the Challenge. Everyone".

After reading the first of Shaun's two blogs, I actually came up with my own idea about how the tour could be more efficient in terms of numbers, and I've based it much more on the system used on the PGA Golf Tour in America, where they have the main PGA Tour and the Web.Com Tour. Firstly, i'd have 80 men on the main tour. That allows more for players that choose not to enter certain events, without creating too many walkovers. When a full group does enter, you simply have a preliminary round prior to round one to get the numbers from 80 down to 64 for round one. This purely comes from an opinion that 80 is probably the number of players on tour that are good enough either now or in the very near future to make a good enough living. Arguably you can look at the numbers on the money list and say that anyone outside of the top 40 players is struggling to make ends meet, based simply on their prize money earnings. You might say that shortening from 128 to either 64 or 80 is a big drop, but not when you consider the amount of amateurs that have to be invited to events. If you take off the honorary members (Davis, Hendry and Wattana) you have 125 names. Then remove the regular non-entry's (Steve Mifsud, Ju Reti, Rouzi Maimaiti, Liu Chuang, Itaro Santos and Igor Figueredo) and you're already down to 119. After that, there are the players that in my view are simply not good enough, or at least not yet. Anyone that's made less than £15,000 in the last year and a half of play (so looking at the end of season projected seedings) would arguably do better to go out and get a full time job away from sport where they'd earn more money through a stable income. (Such players are: Thor Chuan Leong, Steven Hallworth, Lu Chenwei, Ian Glover, Lu Ning, Michael Leslie, Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon, Lee Walker, Tony Drago, David Grace, Chris Melling, Zak Surety and Barry Pinches)

If you had a Challenge Tour below the main tour players like those mentioned above would probably make the same money I've mentioned here, if the Challenge Tour was given the correct funding as it should be. Winning an event on the Challenge Tour would give lower ranked players a great confidence boost, and a place on the main tour at the end of the season with that money and confidence under their belt. As with Shaun's idea, I would promote and relegate 16 at the end of every season, while you can add 8 to the Challenge Tour every year through a Q School, while after every two years you relegate the bottom 16 players from the Challenge tour and make them re-qualify through Q School and the World and European Amateur events.

Poor old Barry Hearn has really gone through a thorough session of 20 questions lately on Twitter over this and he sights the fact that prize money going up being a sign that 128 tour players on tour being a sign that it's working. That's where I disagree. I believe that's a product of the growth of the game worldwide, giving more sponsors opportunities and tournaments, as the top players like Murphy give their all in events around the globe and do their upmost to promote the game in a positive manner, and that needs to be recognised too.

I asked Barry myself on Twitter about his opinion on the fact that out of 128 about 25% of the tour is either not good enough to "cut it" and by that I mean earn a living of any kind, or those that were regular non-entries (and by that I was referring to the likes of Ju Reti and Rouzi Maimaiti who got tour cards via the Asian Tour, only to continue only entering Asian Tour events.)

His response was:

"It's personnel choice and equal opportunity. It's how great businesses grow"

In my mind, if that's true here's a final few thoughts I want to leave you with. I wish to throw out into the open 2 words, perspective and versatility. To address the first of those, I believe whichever way you look at this argument depends on your perspective. As the man running the sport (whom I hugely respect for the job he has and continues to do) you know that you have a good business model which makes money and sense. As a fan like myself you think that 128 players is not best because of the old saying of "quality not quantity" idealising that having 64 or 80 players on a tour that you could take all of to a venue and see a lot less one sided fixtures with that, and many more competitive games. As a higher ranked player you want to be able to avoid playing first round matches a month before the competition fully starts in a totally different location in different playing conditions. You also want to be able to play in front of the big crowds and TV audiences that your talent and hard work has deserved. Meanwhile, lower ranked players outside of the top 64 don't want to lose their main tour playing privileges, but it must also be tough to progress when you're struggling to make money on the tour, and you know that if you can't break into the top 64 inside two years, you'll be sent back to the drawing board anyway.

The second word, versatility, is a massively important thing to have with any business. Being able to adapt to every situation that you come across and pleasing as many people as possible is not an easy thing to do and you have to work out the best way of doing that. TV companies, fans and sponsors all want to see the best players guaranteed at venues in every event. Meanwhile, the governing body has to juggle the demands of all of these people and keep in mind the best interests of the players also. At the end of the day, you want to keep your best players happy and motivated to give their all. As a number of tour players, whether a rigid 128 main tour offers you that versatility is up for debate, while you could give more players a taste of professional snooker life by having a main tour of anywhere between 64 and 80 and have a Challenge Tour that can continuously grow off of that, with as many players as you want to invite from around the world to help promote the best talent on to that main tour when they're ready to really breakthrough and take the world by storm, having proven themselves on a Challenge Tour.

The only other thing that is left for me to say is that, while the possibilities for change may be endless, it is not for me to decide that, I merely want to give my view on how I see these possibilities. At the same time I intend no disrespect to any members of the playing tour, or to Barry Hearn and Jason Ferguson and all of the other people at World Snooker who have worked so hard in recent years to reignite the game.