Is Hawkins finished as a topplayer?

chengdufan wrote:

Ronnie79 wrote:He might win a shitty ranking or the shoot out. He won't ever win a triple crown event

Not sure why the shootout always gets mentioned in these debates. The chance for any individual to win it is small.
What you have to look at for each tournament is how many players realistically have a chance of winning. The World Championship, I'd say about 20 (remember Bingham and Dott). Probably about 40 have a chance of winning a best of 7s/9s then longer final type tournament. About 50 could win a best of 7s throughout. But any one of about 80 could win the shootout.
In addition, you note that the fewer players that have a chance of winning, the bigger the gap in the chance of winning between number one and the least likely. In the worlds, number 1 is much much more likely to win than number 20. In the shootout, the chance of number 1 winning is not much different from the chance of number 80 winning (relatively speaking).

So if you're Hawkins, who at the moment is about the 25th-30th best player, his best chance of winning a tournament would be a short format early rounds, long format final type tournament.
Him getting back into the top 20 for at least a year or two is quite likely. He has the ability. Getting into the top 20 and winning the world's is very unlikely.
Winning the shootout will always be very unlikely.