by fridge46 » 29 Apr 2015 Read
128 Flat Draw for all tournaments (except World Championship)
Glad to see this (Australias' last year of contract is 2015, Shanghai is 2016). Hearn confirmed World Champ, World No 1 plus the two highest ranked players from appropriate country will have their L128 matches held over to venue - in the addition to Wild Cards. Hopefully when prize money grows more, all players will be at the venue.
Home Series
Another good addition, seeing the return of Scottish and Irish Open plus an English Open to join the Welsh Open (would have been nice to have Dublin involved for a 5 event series). This will bump the number of UK based ranking events up from 3 to 7 (see World Grand Prix below). Potentially a nice set of events for ITV to pick up!
Addition of European Open, but less European Tour events
Nice to see Europe receive another major event in 2016/2017, and will move around the continent on a yearly basis. Sad to see this come at the expense of European Tour events, I personally would like to see more of these because I see these as a great way to spreading and exposing the game to new areas.
It will also hurt amateurs, as they will now have less opportunities to play "pro" players. When this starts, they will only be able to do so as a Top-Up player - this seems to be a step backwards in the development of young players in my opinion.
World Grand Prix/PTC Finals Changes
World Grand Prix will keep the same format (top 32 on 1 year money list) but money will go toward rankings. PTC will change in 2016/17 to be a 16 player tournament (from the 1 year money list) - will be somewhat like the Masters, but money going towards ranking!
New QSchools in Asia, Americas, Africa, Oceania and Europe
Again a good edition, but will it come at the expense of to those winning continental championships? if so is this World Snookers way of stopping players pulling a Calabrese in the future? Number of spots per continent will depend on entries but will they only be open to players from that area (ie can an Asian player entry Oceania QSchool?)
Barry was asked if snooker will become like tennis - more than 1 event a week. He said "yes", but I think we are quite a way away from that, but I can see an event every week in the next few years - whether be a ranking, qualifier, invitational
Barry also standing strong on not giving tour wild cards to women champions, and I believe this is necessary. All routes available to gain a tour card are available to both sexes - finishing high enough on the Euro/Asian Tour Lists, EBSA play-off, QSchool, even the EBSA European and U21 Championships (at the recent U21 championship in Malta, there were at least 2 female entrants, though I am not sure if this is true for other confederations).
One thing I found interesting was zero mention of Asia - nothing about potential new events, or comments on the loss of tournaments (Wuxi and World Open), or whether the Asian Tour events will continue with the addition of Asia QSchool.