2017/2018 Season Preview

Another season of snooker is upon us and with Qualifying School completed and the full field of tour players set for the new campaign, everything is ready to get underway with the Riga Masters qualifiers on Wednesday.

The first full tournament of the season will then be the final stages of the Riga Masters from June 23-25, so there is still quite a bit of time to wait before the first silverware is lifted.

Where 2016/2017 left off

Mark Selby was the man picking up trophies like it was nobodies business in the 2016/2017 season. He ended the season as World and UK Champion and is top of the world rankings having smashed the one million pound barrier over the last two seasons.

It's going to be very difficult to beat Selby this season in the big events, but there are still many other trophies to play for besides and despite Selby's dominance, Judd Trump was able to secure some success and ended the year ranked world number 3. World Championship runner-up John Higgins is second in the world, while China's Ding Junhui completes the world's top four. Barry Hawkins has climbed to number five after yet another World Championship semi-final, while Marco Fu is up to six with Neil Robertson and Shaun Murphy very close together at seven and eight.

Stuart Bingham has fallen to number nine in the world with his World Championship prize money of 2015 coming off the money list. Ronnie O'Sullivan has fallen to 14, while Ricky Walden, Joe Perry and Stephen Maguire remain outside of the world's top 16 and will be aiming to fight there way back this year.

Riga Masters and China Championship Qualifiers

As indicated earlier, the qualifying rounds for the Riga Masters kick the season off on Wednesday and last for three days at the Preston Guildhall. Picking up from there on Saturday is the last 128 round for the new China Championship which then lasts Tuesday June 6 in Preston.

At a very early point in the season it is not always going to be the case that the entire tour are prepared to enter these two events. The Riga Masters is the one missing the most players with top players such as John Higgins, Judd Trump, Ding Junhui, Marco Fu, Liang Wenbo, Ali Carter and Ronnie O'Sullivan all choosing to save their season openers for the China Championship.

A completely unseeded draw for Riga has offered some interesting last 128 ties though with Barry Hawkins taking on Michael Holt, while Shaun Murphy faces Belgian Luca Brecel. Selected matches have been held over to the main venue, including that of defending champion Neil Robertson and world champion Mark Selby. Anthony McGill and Chen Zhe also have holdovers as they have been drawn to play two unconfirmed wildcard players.

A number of Q School top-ups have been used to fill the field and the random draw has seen two put up against each other, with 15 year-old Jackson Page facing James Silverwood.

The China Championship is an event that you may remember featuring on last season's calendar. Back in November 2016 it was played as a 16 man invitational tournament, almost as a Chinese version of the Masters. However, the powers that be have decided to make it the same as every other event with a flat 128 draw and full ranking status.

The event also sees a different wildcard system to the norm for Chinese events, with four wildcards coming straight into the last 128, leaving 124 spaces for professionals. On this occasion that has worked out fine but in the event that more than 124 of the tour players entered there would then be a pre-qualifying round to get down to the required 128.

Mark Selby, Andrew Higginson, Daniel Wells and Tian Pengfei have drawn the four wildcards (which are yet to be decided) and will have their last 128 fixtures held over to the main venue stages in August.

Selby's match would have been held back anyway as per the agreement that the world champion and defending champion of Chinese events and the top two Chinese players get to skip qualifying and play their first round games at the venue. This means that John Higgins who won the event when it was invitational in November, as well as China's number one and two Ding Junhui and Liang Wenbo, will not have to travel to Preston.

Changes to the tour

We have already seen a couple of changes to the tour with the addition of the China Championship as a ranking event, and this change to the Chinese wildcard system. As yet it is unknown whether this applies to all Chinese events, and what the situation is with the Shanghai Masters which has still been played under a tiered qualifying system.

With it being the alternate year for it's staging, the World Cup returns after the China B team of Yan Bingtao and Zhou Yuelong took the title in June 2015. The pairs of players and the countries that will be represented are yet to be confirmed with the event not kicking off until July 3.

The Indian Open has changed dates once more, as Anthony McGill will defend the title he won last summer in September this year, the week before the final stages of the Shanghai Masters. The qualifying rounds for both rounds will be played in early August.

In other date change news, it looks as though the Shoot-Out will change once again to an early February date that will come prior to the World Grand Prix this year, rather than following it. Meanwhile, the Welsh Open has been pushed right back to a late February date with the tournament set to conclude on March 4. However, these changes do mean that there will be a clear week before both the Grand Prix and Players Championship, which many people have been calling for. 

Players To Watch

A number of new players have once again joined the professional ranks, and just as I did last year, I have picked out a few players to keep an eye on for the next 12 months.

Xu Si  - My first player to watch for 2017/2018 is the IBSF under-21 champions Xu Si. Xu won that title by beating Alexander Ursenbacher in the final, which is a pretty good win as the Swiss player went on to win a tour card via the European under 21 championship at a later date. He also saw off Lukas Kleckers in the semi-finals, who was good enough to win a tour card this year via Q-School. The 19 year-old Chinese player competed in a few events last year as a wildcard, and impressively overcame a major player in Mark Williams 6-5 in the last 64 of the International Championship having already beaten Wang Yuchen in the wildcard round. Xu also claimed the scalp of James Wattana in the World Open last season, but it is the win over Williams which is most impressive of all given that this was also a major tournament. He is clearly a big young Chinese prospect who has earned his right to be on tour. 

Yuan Sijun - Yuan Sijun has also earned his place on tour, having come through the Asian Under 21 championship. Yuan was put on everybody's radar when he thrashed Martin Gould 5-0 in the 2016 China Open at the age of just 15, as well as beating Andrew Higginson in the wildcard round of that tournament. Gould is a top quality player who was also a ranking event winner by this time which makes this an unbelievable victory that also featured a century break. Although, he displayed that this was not just a one-off in last season's Shanghai Masters when put up against the same opponent, he was able to repeat the dosage. Yet another 5-0 win against Gould and making a century in the match once again is a sign that we have an incredibly promising player on our hands. Beating a player of Gould's class is one thing, but to do it by the margins and with the quality shown is a completely different accomplishment. On top of that he got another wildcard win in the International Championships against Ian Burns, with the scoreline being 6-3 on that occasion. His 17th birthday is on May 29 just two days before the Riga Masters qualifiers get underway making him even younger than Yan Bingtao, and his performances thus far show he could be just as big of a talent.

Ashley Hugill - My third and final player to watch is 22 year-old York potter Ashley Hugill. Hugill earned his place on tour via the first event of Q School. On the way he saw off another impressive player George Pragnall who I think could get on tour in the next couple of years, along with former pro's Steven Hallworth and Simon Bedford. He has had some notable victories in the past though, playing as a top-up in professional events. In China Open qualifying earlier this year he beat Anthony Hamilton 5-2, just a week or so before Hamilton would go on and win his first ranking title at the German Masters. In the Indian Open he beat Ross Muir, whilst triumphing in the first round of the European Masters against Mitchell Mann. If you go back even further to the 2015/2016 season then you will find Hugill's best win. The German Masters qualifiers just after the 2015 UK Championship saw the Englishman beat new UK Champion Neil Robertson 5-1. From what I have seen he looks like a very talented player and his results up to this point show that, and I think he will hit the ground running now that he has picked up his tour card.

Notable Mention: Lu Haotian - On top of my three to watch I will also make a special mention for returning pro Lu Haotian. Lu won the Asian snooker championship by defeating Pankaj Advani in the final, and despite the feeling that he has been around for a long time, he is still only 19. He was unable to survive when his two year tour card ran out at the conclusion of the 2014/2015 season, despite making the final of an Asian Tour event in his first season which really signified the talent that he has. It is much easier to come along and do the business as a wildcard in events under no pressure, but to make a final in his first few months on tour was very impressive. I did wonder, having heard little about him in the last year, if he would disappear from the game but was relieved when discovering that he had won the Asian title in April. Let's not forget that at the age of 14 he beat Marco Fu in the Shanghai Masters, before making the quarter-finals of the International Championship just a month or so later which was an unprecedented achievement at the time.

Plenty of other players have earned a tour place for the next two seasons, with a number of those bouncing straight back onto the tour or regaining places after a year away from the tour. However, as I mentioned earlier there is a return to tour for Alexander Ursenbacher. The swiss player did not have a great deal of success first time out on tour, but will have grown greatly in confidence from winning the European under 21 title and defeating Robert Milkins on the way to the final round of qualifying for this season's World Championships.

German Lukas Kleckers has gained a card through Q School, to offer the German fans a native player to support for the next two years. Success for him could see the game in Germany explode even further and do wonders for the tour throughout Europe, building on the foundations laid by Belgian Luca Brecel.

A second Iranian has joined the ranks, courtesy of Soheil Vahedi's win at the World Amateur Championship. Soheil can take a lot of confidence from the success of his fellow countryman Hossein Vafei over the last year, and had some blistering wins on the way to the amateur title. Andrew Pagett was dispatched 8-1 in the final, after a 7-6 win in the semi-finals against decent young Irishman Declan Brennan, as well as victories over Lukas Kleckers and Chris Totten in the earlier rounds.

The final player I want to mention is Chinese Chen Zifan. Chen only dropped five frames in his six event two wins that saw him get a tour card, and having witnessed his wins on the final day I thought he looked like a promising prospect. In event one he came pretty close to beating Jamie Cope but could not fall over the line. He did gain a scalp as a wildcard in the International Championships of 2016 by beating Tian Pengfei, before only narrowly losing out on the colours in a deciding frame to Liang Wenbo, having been 5-1 down in that particular game.

It all shapes up to be another exciting season of snooker with plenty of hot prospects joining the tour and plenty of tournaments in which to ply their trade, starting of course with the qualifiers in Preston coming up this week.