The 2013/2014 snooker season was another cracking season that saw a lot of people in the winners circle, some returning and others dominant while other players lower down the rankings were fighting for their tour places while others started to make their impressions on the tour and it all outlined some big names for the future.
In this little piece here i'll be looking back on the first part of the 2013/2014 season that was book ended by the Wuxi Classic last June and the UK Championships in December with 7 European Tour, 3 Asian Tour and a further 4 ranking events in between as well as the new Champion of Champions event that replaced the Premier League, just because there simply wasn't enough time for it's weekly instalments on the calendar with Barry Hearn's ever expanding regime.
Time to do an event by event review of last seasons action from June to December:
Bulgaria Open (ET1): Prior to the first ranking event of the season we had the small matter of a couple of Tour events starting off with the first European Tour event in Bulgaria. This won was dominated by some brilliant snooker from John Higgins who had no trouble seeing off some top stars on the final day like Shaun Murphy, Ronnie O'Sullivan before beating Neil Robertson in the final who beat Barry Hawkins from 3-0 down in the semi-finals. So, John Higgins and Neil Robertson were the guys laying down the early marker.
Yixing Open (AT1): Prior to the Chinese ranking event of the season was of course the first of the Asian Tour events, which always see high numbers of Chinese amateurs in attendance and fairly low numbers of top pros. However, the cream rose to the top on this occasion as Joe Perry won his first professional event with any kind of ranking importance beating Mark Selby in the final. This really set up what turned into one of Perry's best seasons in his career. This event also set up a very good season for young Scott Donaldson who made the semi-finals here and went on to make the Players Championship Grand Finals.
Wuxi Classic: The Wuxi Classic was not only the first ranking event of the season but it was also the first full ranking event to adopt the new Flat 128 structure for ranking events, and with all pro's starting from round one, it produced some large upsets. Both Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy missed out on qualification losing their matches in the Last 128 round which was played as qualifiers in the UK. The main event itself also produced some more surprises as it signalled the start of better opportunities for lower ranked players to get through the system. On this occasion it was David Morris and Cao Yupeng who took advantage making the quarter-finals. However, there were no shocks when it came to the end result with John Higgins and Neil Robertson making the final as in Bulgaria, but this time with the opposite result with Higgins losing to World No.1 Robertson 10-7.
Australian Open: The following ranking event in Australia always seems to come across as quite a small event with many of the top players choosing to give it a miss, mainly due to the long flight over and the cost to play against the small prize money on offer. However, it didn't stop Marco Fu picking up his first ranking event for many years in Bendigo, just denying Neil Robertson a win in his home event, which would really have given Australian snooker a big boost. However, there was a big boost here for Robert Milkins who started off his season by making both the semi-finals here and in Wuxi to lay down a marker for things to come. There was also a big boost to Mike Dunn's murky tour survival prospects by qualifying for this event. It was certainly a much needed boost for him.
Rotterdam Open (ET2): After the Australian Open was quite a quiet spell on the snooker tour with summer only producing 3 consecutive European Tour events. The first was in Rotterdam where Mark Williams was the victor and Mark Selby continued his good start to the season by making another tour event final, losing out in a decider here. The semi-finals also went down to deciders where David Gilbert and Gary Wilson were the unlucky players that just missed out on the chance to make the final.
Bluebell Wood Open (ET3): The third European Tour event followed some ranking event qualifiers down at the Doncaster Dome and many of the players (and some fans) didn't like it as a snooker venue. However it didn't matter to Ricky Walden who took the trophy and the winners cheque with some very good performances over the weekend beating Marco Fu in the final. The week also saw Shaun Murphy and Ding Junhui make the semi-finals after a quiet starts to the season.
Paul Hunter Classic (ET4): The Paul Hunter Classic is always a very special event out in Germany and many professional players believe that it should be a full ranking event to be a proper tribute to the great Paul Hunter. It was another brilliant event that was played in his memory, this time producing Ronnie O'Sullivan's first title of the season as he whitewashed Gerard Greene in the final, who had an incredibly good weekend just to get to this final. On this occasion Mark Selby was a losing semi-finalist to Ronnie O'Sullivan and Ali Carter suffered a shock semi-final defeat to Greene.
Shanghai Masters: After a long break since the last full ranking event, the Shanghai Masters came at a very good time for snooker fans, and also started a very good period in Ding Junhui's successful season. It was also an event that brought lot's of surprises even though it was being played on the old tiered event structure. Xiao Guodong had his best ever ranking finish by making the final, losing out in the end to Ding Junhui and it was this all-Chinese final at a Chinese ranking event and the absence of a British full ranking winner during the first half of the season that saw people claim a new Asian snooker domination was incoming. There were further surprises in this event as young Kyren Wilson made the quarter-finals of this one and Michael Holt had several good results to make the semi-finals before losing out to the runner-up Guodong.
Asian Tour 2: This event also saw a number of surprise results with a number of the Chinese amateurs that enter these events going into the latter stages. In fact 6 of the 8 quarter-finalists were Chinese amateurs, with Lu Chenwei making the semi-finals while it was amateur player Ju Reti that was the best of the bunch that week by beating Michael Holt in the final to walk away with the trophy and surely a place on the tour next year via the order of merit.
Ruhr Open (ET5): As the tour returned to Germany for the second time of the season we had the start of Mark Allen's dominance in the European Tour events as he took first prize on that weekend in Germany beating the equally dominant Ding Junhui in the final. There was also a very good weekend for young Robbie Williams who boosted his tour survival hopes by making the semi-finals.
Indian Open: The first ever ranking event to take place in India was next up on the calendar as the world snooker tour tried to attract more Indian fans. It was certainly helped by some stunning performances in the event by it's tour stars Aditya Mehta and Pankaj Advani who took their home advantage well. The pair made it to the quarter-finals where they played each other with Mehta winning on this occasion, and he went on to make the final of the event only to lose out to Ding Junhui who won his second ranking event on the trot with a very easy victory. Meanwhile, Robbie Williams was able to continue his good form by making the semi-finals as he did in Germany just a few weeks before.
Asian Tour 3: The penultimate Asian Tour event on the calendar was once again dominated by the Chinese players, but this time it was the professionals doing the damage. It was Liang Wenbo who rediscovered some of his better form to win the event beating Chinese teenage sensation Lu Haotian in the final, while Xiao Guodong continued to impress by making the semi-finals and carry on climbing up the ranking list.
International Championship: The last Chinese ranking event of 2013 and also the biggest Chinese ranking event on the calendar was next up as the snooker tour headed to Chengdu for the International Championship. The end result was that it was quite simply the continuation of Ding Junhui's domination at the top of the game by winning is 3rd ranking event in succession having already won the Indian Open and the Shanghai Masters. This one wasn't all plain sailing for Ding though as he had to win a very tough and tight final against Marco Fu which was one of the Classic matches of 2013 going all the way to a decider, Ding winning 10-9. Both semi-finals were also very tight with Ding overcoming Graeme Dott 9-7 and Joe Perry continuing his great season by reaching the semi's but just losing out 9-8 to Marco Fu.
Kay Suzanne Memorial Cup (ET6): Next stop on Barry Hearn's tour bus was Gloucester for the 6th European Tour event of the year and what may turn out to be the final ever UK PTC after Barry Hearn announced there would be no UK PTC's in the 2014/2015 season that could spell the end of such events. In the actual event itself known as the "Pink PTC" it was Mark Allen who won consecutive European Tour events beating Judd trump this time in the final. Jamie Jones and Graeme Dott also had very good runs to make the semi-finals, while young lads like Chris Wakelin, Sam Baird and Joel Walker all made it to the quarter-finals, continuing there nice runs in the ET events.
Antwerp Open (ET 7): The penultimate European Tour event of the season in Belgium saw another 2013 classic match as Mark Selby won his first event of the season by beating Ronnie O'Sullivan 4-3 in a brilliant final filled with plenty of drama. There were also semi-final appearances for another Leicester player in Ben Woollaston and Jack Lisowski while Joel Walker made it consecutive ET quarter-final places to really boost his standing on the Euro order of merit to try and hold onto his tour card.
Champion of Champions: Shortly after the conclusion in Antwerp it was off to the Ricoh Arena for the new Champion of Champions cup featuring 14 off last seasons top-ups while Shaun Murphy and Mark Davis were the highest ranked players not already in so they made up the numbers. The format was meant to be a group format with each group playing on each day though effectively the group semi-finals were Last 16 games and the group finals were effectively quarter-finals. The group winners (or semi-finalists) were Mark Selby, Stuart Bingham, Neil Robertson and Ronnie O'Sullivan with O'Sullivan beating Robertson in a decider in the second semi-final and Stuart Bingham overcoming Selby in the first. That left a Bingham Vs O'Sullivan final that was an incredibly close encounter with Bingham holding onto O'Sullivan almost throughout the match before a late Ronnie O'Sullivan burst gave him the title.
UK Championships: Finally, the first half of the season (and part 1 of my season review) came to a close with the UK Championships in York which was the first Triple Crown event of the season, but also the first ever ranking event to have the Flat 128 draw with all matches being played at the venue, rather than the Last 128 being played earlier in the year as qualifiers. The Flat 128 draw for the UK Championships did produce some upsets as young amateur Mitchell Travis defeated Marco Fu in the Last 128 round before then beating Kurt Maflin to make it into the Last 32. The problem the event had was with there being sometimes 4 or 8 tables going on at once, it didn't feel like the event even got started until the quarter-finals when they were down to the usual 2 tables. It was at this stage that Ronnie O'Sullivan fell on his birthday to in form Stuart Bingham. It was Bingham and Neil Robertson that produced a classic semi-final with Robertson racing into an 8-3 lead before Bingham won 5 frames in a row to force the decider only for Robertson to win the decider and make the final anyway. Meanwhile in the other semi-final Mark Selby made the 100th professional 147 in thrashing Ricky Walden 9-5. So the final was between defending champion Mark Selby and the World No.1 Neil Robertson, and it was Neil Robertson that stopped Mark Selby from defending his title by coming back from 5-2 down to beat him 10-7 and complete his own Triple Crown.
Well that's it for part 1 of my season review from last season, and there was a lot of good snooker in there but a definite absence of a British ranking winner, with Neil Robertson starting his season off well by winning 2 titles and Ding Junhui playing the best snooker of his career to win 3 ranking titles in a row.
In Part 2 of my 2013/2014 season review I will be looking at how things went from The Masters in January to the World Championships that concluded in early May.
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