This is the second part of my 2013/2014 season preview, and in the first part I had a look back at the early parts of the season featuring the first triple crown event of the season and many of the years tour events in Europe and Asia. In the first half of the season we saw a more oversees domination in many of the ranking events spearheaded by China's Ding Junhui, so in the second part of the season it was time for the Brits to hit back. Meanwhile, at the foot of the rankings the race for tour spaces for the 2014/2015 season and beyond was really warming up as a lot of players started to feel the pressure in the later ranking events.
The second half of the season then is marked at both the start and the end by the 2 remaining Triple Crown events with January's Masters and the World Championships culminating the season in May. In between times there were a further 5 ranking events, the final Euro and Asian Tour events, the Championship League and the short format Shoot-out event.
So, it's time to resume my event-by-event summary of how things went down in the second half of the 2013/2014 season starting at London's Alexandria Palace:
The Masters: The first proper event of 2014 was of course the 2nd Triple Crown event of the season and the most prestigious invitation event in the game of snooker. With a lot of top names showing up in London for this one you'd have expected it to be a closely contested event, and a lot of games were very close. However, Ronnie O'Sullivan really did dominate the tournament only dropping a few frames in the whole event producing "snooker from the Gods" to beat Ricky Walden 6-0 in the quarter-finals recording 556 unanswered points in a match that lasted about an hour. He then went on to face Stephen Maguire in the semi-finals (who'd beaten Joe Perry and Neil Robertson in his 2 games) and he gave poor Stephen a thrashing as well 6-2. Meanwhile Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy contested the other semi-final after Selby came through 2 deciders against Mark Davis and John Higgins while Murphy had produced 2 good comebacks to beat Ding Junhui and Marco Fu. However that semi-final was a rout for Mark Selby as he beat Shaun 6-1 and Murphy played poorly and he said that really was a defining low. Selby couldn't get close to Ronnie O'Sullivan in the final though as Ronnie took the title with a massive 10-4 victory and he really did deserve it.
Snooker Shoot-out: At the end of January was another fun weekend at the Blackpool Tower with the 1 frame snooker shoot-out. A freshly blonde Dominic Dale took the ever increasing prize money there beating Stuart Bingham in the final. The players all seem to let there hair down a bit at this event as we saw with Dale singing a bit of Sinatra before lifting the trophy.
German Masters: Just a few days after the fun of Blackpool we were back to serious business and one of mine and many of the players favourite events at the Tempodrome in Berlin for the German Masters. We certainly had a surprise semi-finalist with Rod Lawler making it to the last 4 before losing out 6-1 to Judd Trump while Ryan Day showed us what he's still capable of by making the semi-finals before losing out in a tight game against Ding Junhui. It was Ding that went on to win his 4th ranking event of the season and deny Trump his first ranking event since November 2012 running away with the final after a close start.
Gdynia Open (ET8): The final European tour event of the season took place in Poland in mid-February and there was a lot to play for guys hovering around the 24 mark on the European order of merit with the Top 24 qualifying for the Grand Finals. Shaun Murphy was 24th on the order of merit coming into the week so he knew he had work to do. In the end he played brilliantly from start to finish romping to victory in the final 4-1 against Fergal O'Brien who also played himself in the Grand Finals. There were also good weeks for Sam Baird and Matt Selt who made it to the semi-finals, culminating a very good series of ET's for Baird.
Welsh Open: The Welsh Open in Newport was another big case of Ronnie O'Sullivan domination as he eased once again to yet another title. No-one could really get close to him as he pulled out some more brilliant snooker including a 147 to win the frame that clinch him the title in the final against Ding Junhui. Ding having already won 4 ranking title this season would've been very disappointed not to more than 3 frames in the best-of-17 final. There was also a brilliant week for young Joel Walker to show himself on the global stage making the quarters and showing some of his great potential as he led Ding 4-2 in the quarter-final only to lose 5-4.
Asian Tour 4: Stuart Bingham was back in the winners circle in the 4th and final Asian Tour event of the season beating Liang Wenbo who finished off his Asian Tour season with another cracking result. There were also good runs to the semi-final for Yu De Lu and Chinese amateur Cai Jianzhong.
Haikou World Open: This was a massive event for Shaun Murphy's season after his win in Poland to win his first ranking event in 3 years given the players that he beat all within the same week and his performances throughout the week were superb to beat Ding Junhui, Graeme Dott and Mark Allen to reach the final where he met Mark Selby who overcame a tough semi-final with Marco Fu. Shaun Murphy started the final off like a rocket to lead 7-2 after the first session with some great breaks included and his match play was good in the final session to hang on and win the match beating Selby 10-6 which added another final defeat to Selby's growing collection during the 2013/2014 season. The flat draw produced some more surprises in Haikou as well as Mark Joyce and Alan McManus made it to the quarter-finals, and McManus in particular was in the middle of a brilliant season where he had and would continue to pick up some great results.
Players Championship Finals: This event seemed to be a little bit of a damp squid in the end with a lot of the top players bowing out early and the event only being best-of-7 throughout for a full ranking event with big prize money. However, Yu De Lu continued his good form to reach the quarter-finals in Preston beating Ronnie O'Sullivan along the way, while Gerard Greene surprised everyone by making the final, just as he did in making the Paul Hunter Classic final. Marco Fu continued one of his more consistent seasons by making the semi-finals before being shocked by Greene who also beat Mark Allen in the quarter's, and Judd Trump looked very good before he crashed and burned in the second half of his semi-final against eventual champion Barry Hawkins who whitewashed Gerard Greene who found his first ranking event final a bridge too far.
China Open: The penultimate ranking event of the season and one of the signature Asian ranking events came just a couple of days after the Players Championship finals which saw a number of players pull out including Mark Allen and Barry Hawkins. What the tournament did see was one the completion of one of the tours greatest comebacks and a huge tournament shock as Mike Dunn made the semi-finals in Beijing to somehow guarantee tour safety before even going to the World qualifiers, having been very low down at the seasons start. The most dramatic moment for Dunn was his quarter-final win over a poor Mark Selby, although he couldn't reproduce in the semi-finals losing out 6-0 to home favourite Ding Junhui. In the opposite half of the draw we had another very big story as Neil Robertson somehow made the final of the event against high odds as he came into the event really quite unwell having contracted a bad virus that he said he wouldn't got on the plane to Beijing knowing the full extent of. However after 3 deciding frame victories, a tight quarter-final win against Graeme Dott and a great performance to beat Ali Carter 6-2 in the semi-finals, the Aussie did make it to the final only to lose out to Ding Junhui who won his 5th ranking event of the season.
World Championships: As always the season ended with the greatest tournament on the planet, the World Snooker Championships at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield. The qualifiers were also held in Sheffield at the Ponds Forge Leisure centre where some equally big stories developed with tour survival reaching it's climax and an end to a very long era coming in as defeat for Steve Davis to Craig Steadman relegated the legend from the tour, although Jimmy White managed to survive courtesy of Dominic Dale's Last 16 win over Michael Wasley. Some of the other stories from the qualifiers were that for the first time in a very long time all of Peter Ebdon, Mark Williams, Graeme Dott and Matthew Stevens would miss out on the Crucible losing their qualifying matches while 2 games that saw Robbie Williams beat Fergal O'Brien and Michael Wasley beat Robert Milkins went down to re-spotted blacks in deciding frames.
Onto the final stages itself and there was one huge opening round shock as the seasons biggest ranking winner in Ding Junhui fell as the first hurdle in a deciding frame to Crucible debutant Michael Wasley while former champion John Higgins fell to Alan McManus who made it to the quarter-finals. The early stages of the tournament were dominated by twice defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan after he survived a Last 16 scare to beat Joe Perry before thrashing Shaun Murphy in the quarters and Barry Hawkins in the semis each with a full session to spare. Meanwhile, Neil Robertson made it to the semi-finals and was able to bring up his century of centuries for the 2013/2014 season while his semi-final opponent Mark Selby had quietly gone about his business to get to that stage. It was a very close semi-final, and going into the last session the score was level at 12-12 but it was the Jester that was just the stronger in the final session pulling away for a 17-15 victory and a place in the World Final for the second time.
The final seemed to be going the way of Ronnie O'Sullivan as he led the match 10-7 after the opening day having led 10-5 at one stage, but in the 3rd session on the Monday afternoon Selby won all of the opening four frames to take an 11-10 lead in the match, with the final 2 frames of the session being shared as Selby took a 12-11 lead into the final session with a possible 12 frames to play due to an early finish. Selby took 3 of the opening 4 frames of that session to lead 15-12 at the final mid-session break and be just 3 frames from his first world title. Ronnie then won the next 2 after the break though to close the gap to one at 15-14 before Selby pulled away again winning 3 frames in a row and taking the 18-14 win.
That brings my 2013/2014 Season review to a close then, and what a season it was with endless amounts of brilliant snooker, quality tournaments with plenty of people winning tournaments all over the world and lots of other young players and players further down the rankings making a name for themselves as the Flat 128 structure was introduced.
What can we expect from the 2014/2015 season? Well i'll be bringing you my thoughts on that in the next couple of weeks but one things for sure, it's bound to be another exciting season packed full of brilliant events.
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