After Neil Robertson won the first event of the season over in Latvia at the Riga Masters, this week sees the return to the snooker calendar of the Indian Open which will be played for the first time since March 2015. Michael White is defending champion from what was a week in which he followed a win at the Shoot-out with his first ranking title by winning in India.
The format for the tournament is the same as the first two stagings and very similar to that of the recent Riga Masters. Each of the rounds from the Last 64 to the semi-finals are played over the best-of-7 frames with the final being a best-of-9 frames match.
When the tournament starts out on Tuesday there will be two held over matches which feature defending champion White and the sole Indian player on the professional tour in Aditya Mehta. Elsewhere, there are now five wildcard matches after the withdrawal of Fraser Patrick from the event saw Ishpreet Chadha get a bye into the Last 64. These wildcard matches do feature a couple of familiar faces to snooker fans with Pankaj Advani who had his time on tour before deciding to concentrate solely on his billiards again, while Lucky Vatnani is someone many will recognise and his most recent action saw him play in Q School in the off-season.
With £50,000 for the winner of this one on Saturday it is an opportunity for someone to get their season off to a perfect start and surge up the rankings given the absence of some of the top players. World Champion Mark Selby, John Higgins, Judd Trump, Riga Champion Neil Robertson, Mark Allen, Ronnie O'Sullivan, Joe Perry and former winner Ding Junhui all decided not to enter this one, while Riga runner-up Michael Holt failed to qualify when the Last 128 round was played in Preston at the end of May.
There are still plenty of big names in the draw, so let's take a look at who has a good chance at coming out on top over the 5 days in Hyderabad:
Quarter 1
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)
Michael White or Anthony Hamilton Vs Eden Sharav
Gary Wilson Vs
Zhao Xintong or Kamal Chawla
Mark Davis Vs Robin Hull
Jamie Burnett Vs
Akani Songsermsawad
Xiao Guodong Vs Jimmy Robertson or Aditya Mehta
Kyren Wilson Vs Martin O'Donnell
Jamie Jones Vs James Wattana
Martin Gould Vs Allan Taylor
In this top quarter of the draw we not only have the defending champion Michael White but India's number one in Aditya Mehta. Kyren Wilson is back having withdrawn from Riga through illness but he has now been given the all clear to fly so will be appearing in Hyderabad this week and will be one of the main contenders. Martin Gould will be hoping for better after an early Riga exit, while Xiao Guodong will be hoping to continue a better start this season after initially qualifying for all of the first three events in the season, and then in the main stages of the Riga Masters, reaching the quarter-finals. Any time Zhao Xintong is in the draw he could certainly be a threat such is his talent. I've looked somewhat more outside of the box though for a quarter winner and that man is Mark Davis. His record in Asia suggests he generally has more success playing in this part of the world and with the lack of real top players in the draw, these events over short formats usually seem to open up for someone and I think Mark Davis fits the bill.
Quarter Winner: Mark Davis
Quarter 2
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)
Marco Fu Vs Hamza Akbar or Dillip Kumar
Dominic Dale Vs Ishpreet Chadha
Liam Highfield Vs Duane Jones
Peter Ebdon Vs
Zhou Yuelong
Robbie Williams W/O Luca Brecel
Ryan Day Vs John Astley
Jack Lisowski Vs Sam Baird
Ricky Walden Vs Nigel Bond
Quarter two also has a couple of top players as well as the room for surprises. Someone like Zhou Yuelong could go well this week because he seems to continue picking up results and steadily climbing the rankings, so perhaps he is not too far away from a breakthrough. Ryan Day is constantly mentioned as one of the best players never to have won a ranking event, but as time ticks by and events like this when a number of top players are absent come and go his chances of getting one on the board become a lot slimmer. Marco Fu will fancy his chances if he's been looking at the draw because he could go very deep into this draw if he finds his form. One player I fancy this week though is Ricky Walden. Walden made the final when this event was last staged and ended last season with some good form by reaching the Players Championship final and the China Open final. It is no secret by now that Walden plays some his best snooker in Asia having won three times in China as well as the finals that I have mentioned. As well as this Walden will be looking for a good start to the season after the poor start he had last season.
Quarter Winner: Ricky Walden
Quarter 3
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)
Shaun Murphy Vs Daniel Wells
Dechawat Poomjaeng Vs
Michael Georgiou
Graeme Dott Vs Oliver Lines
Mitchell Mann Vs Andrew Higginson or Manan Chandra
Joe Swail Vs Jimmy White
Robert Milkins Vs
Stuart Carrington
Mike Dunn Vs David Lilley
Mark Williams Vs Zhang Yong
In the bottom half of the draw we find a semi-finalist from Riga with Mark Williams who was very unlucky not to make the final there, so he will be looking now to kick on and go a couple better than his performance here in 2015 when he lost out to Michael White in the semi-finals. Mitchell Mann's impressive end to last season could make him a little bit of a dark horse this week if he can continue moving in the right direction while Graeme Dott played one of the better matches this tournament has seen in a 4-3 victory over Robin Hull in 2015 that had more twists and turns than one of Norfolk's country back roads. Meanwhile, Shaun Murphy plays in his first tournament of the season, as well as making his first trip to India. After a good end to last season that saw Murphy win the Grand Prix and make the semi-finals of the Players Championship, and he will now want to put that disappointing first round exit from the World Championship behind him. Newly married in the off-season, fatherhood is also on the horizon too for Murphy so he would dearly love to get a title under his belt before the baby arrives and get off to a better start than he has perhaps in more recent seasons.
Quarter Winner: Shaun Murphy
Quarter 4
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)
Barry Hawkins Vs Ashley Hugill
Mark King Vs Rory McLeod
Stephen Maguire Vs
Alfie Burden
Elliot Slessor Vs
Fang Xiongman or Pankaj Advani
Anthony McGill Vs Oliver Brown
Matt Selt Vs David Grace or Lucky Vatnani
Matthew Stevens Vs Mark Joyce
Stuart Bingham Vs Steven Hallworth
It seems that a lot of the top players are hiding out in this bottom quarter of the draw. Barry Hawkins is here in his first event of the season, looking for a strong start to the season as he did last year when he won the 2015 Riga Open. Stephen Maguire also appears for the first time in a full event after his failure to qualify for the Riga Masters. Matt Selt will also feature this week having been banned from the Riga Masters and after that decision from the powers that be, Selt will be hoping to channel any anger into good results on the table this week. Matthew Stevens has had a nice start to the season by qualifying for all of the first three events, the first of which in Riga saw him lose out in the Last 16 to eventual champion Neil Robertson. He could be one of the surprise packages this week. However, my pick in this bottom section is Anthony McGill. McGill has of course impressed most in the last two World Championships where he reached the quarter-finals in 2015 after beating defending champion Mark Selby and then this year he reached the Last 16 after beating Shaun Murphy. Between those two Crucible efforts though, came a poor season where he failed to fire on the same cylinders so the next step for him is certainly to take that game into more tournaments and make the runs into quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals as well as getting that first title on the board that we all know he is capable of doing. An inviting start came in Riga when he made the quarter-finals before losing out to Michael Holt and I think he could carry that on and go one better this week.
Quarter Winner: Anthony McGill
Predicted Tournament Runner-Up: Shaun Murphy
Predicted Tournament Winner: Ricky Walden
While it does look like being an intriguing week of snooker it is a shame that it will only be able to be viewed by Eurosport Player and is not on TV for any of the five days. Quite frankly I still need convincing on whether the £60 a year subscription fee will be worth it to watch the smaller events on the calendar, especially on weeks like this when time differences mean matches will be taking place in the mornings and afternoons if you are living in the UK and Europe. Following the conclusion here in India the next snooker will come from the 25th - 31st of July in China for the World Open.
