Yeah, my headline game isn’t working today. I’m just thankful I wrote most of this thing yesterday otherwise it most be mostly judsdxecmb;ynrmy;etfxsa………..
Four winners of Event 2 were announced yesterday after Duane Jones, Chen Zifan, Sanderson Lam & Paul Davison won their quarter-finals. To make things interesting, four more winners are decided by their best performances in the two events are they are Zhang Yong, Sean O’Sullivan, Joe Swail & Martin O’Donnell.
Event 2 has many ups and downs as well as many turns, as the open event gives these amateurs opportunity to try again after being so close or so rubbish in Event 1. Many pros such as Jamie Cope and Sydney Wilson and failing to bounce straight back to tour and the seasoned players in Tony Drago and Tony Knowles couldn’t make the cut.
But Q-School never disappoints. The qualifiers are always a mix of those who everyone wants to qualify, hot prospects, ex-pros and players you never thought to see again.
The Winners
The first person to make it through is Duane Jones, who was relegated from tour just last season at No. 98 in the rankings. Having qualified through Q-School two years ago by beating Zhao Xintong in the decider, he suffered in his first year by winning only two matches but rose 20 places in his second year due to wins against Luca Brecel, Anthony Hamilton and Mike Dunn. Though he was whitewashed in his first match in the first Event in Q-School, he defeated former professional Simon Bedford and regular wildcard warrior Hu Hao to defeat Alex Davies 4-2.
Next is another regular wildcard warrior Chen Zifan, who defeated Welshman Ben Jones 4-1 to make his professional debut. Little is known about him, though defeated Tian Pengfei 6-3 and lost in the decider against Liang Wenbo 6-5 in the International Championship. It really seems that every year, at least two Chinamen make their debuts – there are five already, excluding him! China seems to be oiling their conveyor belt of players very nicely!
Sanderson “The Panda” Lam managed to qualify through exactly the same vein as Duane. Whitewashed by Simon Dent in his first round of the first event and romped home in Event 2 beating young Englishman Callum Costello, and then beating Lu Ning on the final pink. At last, he convincingly beat Joe Swail 4-2.
Back on the tour, get in! pic.twitter.com/H5s4Hw8oLs
— Sanderson Lam (@sandi147) May 20, 2017
The last winner is Paul Davison, who qualified for what feels like the umpteenth time! Resilient as he, the 45-year-old’s best result in his long career is reaching the Last 32 of 2012 & 2014 German Masters and 2013 Australian Goldfields Open, but failed to make a significant impact in the past two years. He almost qualified in Event 1, losing to Billy Joe Castle 4-2, but made it second time lucky by beating James Cahill 4-2, knocking him out of any prospect of being professional this year.
The Lucky Losers
There is a tennis reference in there somewhere.
These are the snooker players who performed the best in both Q School events by the number of frames they won. Yes, I am being repetitive as Theresa May during this damn election campaign.
These include pros Sean O’Sullivan and Zhang Yong. They finished last season No. 89 and No. 95 respectively. Zhang is a charismatic player as he showed when he reached the Last 32 of the Snooker Shoot-Out and German Masters. He had a few decent results in beating Andrew Higginson, Mark Davis and Mark Joyce but has failed to string a run together, but the 21-year-old immediate bounces back after winning 36 frames from two events – the most out of all the non-winners. The Storm has been knocking on the door for some time having qualified three times now and twice from Q School. He showed promise in 2015/2016 but failed to capitalise in the next season. Let’s hope he improves.
In fact, all who made it through Order of Merit are pros. Joe Swail looked very much in danger after losing 4-3 to Ng On Yee in the first round has was behind against Zak Surety in the second event. But he came back, beating him and Joel Walker to reach the final. Despite losing to Lam, he still won 33 frames over two events. Last but not least is Martin O’Donnell, who failed to qualify in Event 1 after being defeated by Lukas Kleckers in the quarter-final. Despite losing the decider in Round 3 against Ashley Carty, he is the final person to qualify through Order of Merit. Even though he won the same number of frames against stalwart Jackson Page, possibly the fact Martin made it to the final stage at all made sure of his professional place.
So there you have it! A lot of talent in play, exciting to have a German on tour to fantastic that Swail is still plugging away! Possibly the only bad thing I can say about this crop of 12 is that only four are debutants (Kleckers, Castle, Hugill, Chen). Thankfully, there are top-ups if the draw is short, meaning you haven’t seen the last of Page, Hu, Davies & Jamie Rhys Clarke in a hurry (see snapshot below from snooker.org on the Order of Merit). Besides, Page has more important things to be getting on with, he probably has double Biology lessons at school on a Monday morning.
I hate Biology.
