PREVIEW: Eden World Women’s Championship

Well, this is a first – my first article on women’s snooker!

I do have another article about women in the sport, looking at referees, players and the like. But there is the World Championships and this is an awesome opportunity to look at the players in more depth. It is interesting as snooker became more global how women’s snooker evolved much more differently compared to men’s. This tournament is in Singapore for a start and Barry Hearn wouldn’t let the men’s championship leave England at all for now. The women’s circuit features more Indian players than their male counterpart in Aditya Mehta and features players from South Korea, Belarus, Latvia, and Russia – countries that have yet to touch the men’s circuit. Probably the average snooker fan will go as far as Reanne Evans and Ng On-Yee including myself, so – KNOWLEDGE!

The World Championship is structured a lot differently than the men’s game. Instead of 32 players starting in Round 1 and working their way through a linear draw, the Women’s World Championship is split into groups of eight of four players, with eight players seeded in each one rather than sixteen.

Within each group, each player plays a maximum of five frames each match and the top two players in each go to the next round, which means we ended up a number of mixed results. Even before the last sixteen one seeded player in Suzie Opacic (ranked 6th in the world) has been knocked out.

What is quite interesting is that instead of being out of the tournament, all players including Suzie who finished in the bottom two of each group play in the Challenge Cup, which is another opportunity to gain some lovely silverware and the £225 winner’s prize. Well, nowhere near in comparison to the men’s but that is another article for another day.

The Last 16 of the Challenge Cup has already finished, with Suzie progressing to the quarter-finals with a 3-0 win over 21st seeded South Korean Jeong Min Park and will surely be favourite for the Challenge Cup with what seems to be only 26th seed Ronda Sheldreck in the way. In the winner’s circle, the quarter-final lineup has been decided. Though some high-profile seeds have been knocked already such as Maria Catalano, Welsh Laura Evans (of course she would be Welsh) and Latvian Tatjana Vasiljeva, all eight group winners remain to win the £5,000 jackpot.

Let’s look at the quarter-final line-up, shall we? I mean, it is the entire point of this article. I could talk about Michael Palin in the Himalaya and see a local prove his flexibility by putting his leg behind his head before seeing Palin talk about Friendship Bridge, but that would be just too silly.

Reanne Evans (1) vs. Siripaporn Nuanthakhamjan

Thank you, got that right in one!

There is plenty to say about Reanne Evans. 11-time World champion in the past twelve years. She competed in the men’s professional circuit in 2010-2011. She beat upcoming Thai player Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 5-4 to reach the main event of the 2013 Wuxi Classic and more famously gave Ken Doherty a right scare in the 2015 World Championship Qualifiers by leading 4-3 before succumbing to a 10-8 defeat. We will see her in this year’s World Championship Qualifiers giving another crack to get to the Crucible for the first time.

She is the current World Champion by beating Ng On-Yee 6-4 last year and has yet to drop a set in Singapore after beating German Diana Schuler. Not much is know about Nuanthakhamjan, but the female Thai is clearly a young prospect. The winner of the 2016 World U-18 Championship, U-21 finalist as well as the 2016 World 6-reds Champion shows that she is a real threat indeed.

Ng On-Yee (2) vs. Waratthanun Sukritthanes

Yeah, that name took me a number of goes to get it right (and no, it is not Ng!)

Ng has done bloody well for someone who fell into snooker after loving the smart tuxedo and bowtie his dad was wearing at a local tournament. She was relatively unknown until she beat Reanne Evans in the World semi-finals in 2015 to beat Emma Bonney 6-4 to be the first non-UK World Champion since 1980. She lost in last year’s final but has also experienced life in the men’s circuit, though got hammered by Peter Lines 10-1.

Not much is known about the 23-year-old unseeded Thai Sukritthanes and is another young prospect who could dominate in years to come since she is the semi-finalist in the 2016 World Amateur Championship. But it does look like we can see Reanne and Ng battle it out in the semi-finals.

For more information on Ng, look at the Q&A by World Snooker: http://www.worldsnooker.com/ng-on-yee-qa/

Vidya Pillai vs. Katrina Wan (7)

Both relatively unknown to most snooker fans but both successful players in their own right. Indian player Vidya Pillai won many national titles and IBSF trophies in both snooker and 6-red events. Katrina Wan had shared much success with Hong Kong counterpart Ng On-Yee, teaming up with her by beating Vasiljeva and Catalano 4-1 in the 2016 World Ladies Pairs Snooker Championship. She is the 8th seed in the rankings.

Varsha Sanjeev vs. Rebecca Granger (8)

Finally, names I am confident in typing!

Granger dropped just one frame in the group stages and followed it up by beating Singaporean Hoe Shu Wah 4-2. In the previous event, she reached the final of the Connie Gough Memorial Trophy, beating Opacic and Evans in deciders along the way before losing 4-2 to Catalano. She may be 12th in the rankings, but there could be a possibility of reaching final. Sanjeev is another unseeded Indian player, but after beating 4th seed Laura Evans in the group stages must mean she is on form indeed.

A lot of foraging on the Internet was needed here! Many thanks to Matina Keogh of the RISLA (Republic of Ireland Ladies Snooker Association) for providing me with more information on this tournament and bringing up the idea of me doing a post on this event.