The start of the 2017/2018 is slowly bearing fruit. 19 ranking events. More Chinese players piling in. More continental Europeans coming in. A lot of “out with the old” such as Jamie Cope and Michael Wild and “in with the new,” such as German Lukas Kleckers, yet another bloody Chinese prodigy in Yuan Sijun and up-and-coming Ashley Hugill.
Since Mark Selby’s triumph, we snooker fellas have detoxified ourselves from snooker to wondering what Trump has to do to get impeached, asking ourselves why Philoctetes from Disney film Hercules endorsed Jeremy Corbyn and distracting ourselves to seeing an escaped llama run riot in Mansfield. Here’s a llama there’s a llama and another little llama fuzzy llama funny llama llama llama duck. Llama llama cheesecake llama tablet brick potato llama llama llama mushroom llama llama llama duck.
With Q School finished and the list of people finalised, who can shine through? We have seen a number of shocks outside of the Top 32, with Chinese duo Yan Bingtao and Zhou Yuelong excelling and Scott Donaldson and Akani Songsermsawad springing surprises. Who should we watch out for this year? Who has signs of improvement or become that bolt from the blue? Out of many to choose from, here is a short list of those outside the Top 32 to rummage through!
Xiao Guodong – Rank: 39
This is a man on the road to redemption.
Probably as inconsistent as a typical White House statement, Xiao reached his first ranking final against Ding Junhui in the 2013 Shanghai Masters, made his first appearance at the Crucible in the same year and reached as high as No. 19 in 2015. Then he took a complete dive in form, failing to qualify for many oversea events and slumped 30 places to No. 51. It was only this season when his reached his first quarter-final in two years at the Riga Masters, became a Shoot-Out finalist (new ranking points definitely helped!) and reached the Last 16 of the World Championships for the first time by beating Ryan Day 10-4 that he finally found a resurgence in form.
By finishing 25th in last season’s one-year ranking, he has a brilliant platform to work on this season with £80,025. Most importantly, he only has £21,750 worth of points from his torrid 2015/2016 to lose. This means he has a brilliant chance of moving back into the Top 32 where he belongs. If he had the same amount of confidence last season as he did this season, then he will go far.
Stuart Carrington – Rank: 46
What has Stuart Carrington done to be in the exclusive club of John Higgins, Mark Selby, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Neil Robertson? Well, in last year’s World Championships, he went into the triple-ton record books with breaks of 124, 101 and 107, despite losing to Liang Wenbo 10-7. He still received a number of plaudits, with Joe Perry and Ronnie O’Sullivan positively commenting on his ability.
Stuart was one of the surprises last season for me. But he is now an established player who is rock-solid. He qualified for the German Masters and especially in the Shanghai Masters by beating Luca Brecel and went ton to beat Joe Perry in the opening round. He reached his first ranking quarter-final in the Welsh Open before being beaten by eventual winner Stuart Bingham. But he really impressed by winning three qualifying matches against Alex Borg, Andrew Higginson and more impressively, Mark Williams. Like Xiao, he has little to lose from last season, having earned £25,375.
Yan Bingtao – Rank: 56
This 17-year-old has won 63% of his matches in his first ever season, beating the likes of Mark Davis, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy and Liang Wenbo this season. He’s reached the Last 32 five times, the Last 16 five times and the quarter-finals of the German Masters before losing to Stuart Bingham. Reaching the World Championship after beating Craigie, Yan and Ursenbacher is phenomenal for a 17-year-old, the first to do so since Luca Brecel qualified as a 17-year-old in 2012. He came back from 9-5 down to 9-8 and was unlucky to lose to a fluke by Shaun Murphy that led him to clear up to win 10-8.
How far will he go? Don’t forget, this is his first year and he has no points to drop this season. To put things into perspective – if this hot prospect accumulates the same number of points last season this season, he would reach No. 26, ahead of Ben Woollaston, Luca Brecel and Michael White. Will he be complacent? Will his opponents be encouraged to up their game against him, leading to unexpected losses? Kyren Wilson said this happened to him after this unexpected 2015 Shanghai Masters. Only time will tell…..
John Astley: Rank: 77
Past-professional-turned-theatre-star-turned-professional-again (I have yet to see The Nap), John Astley is having a second crack after failing in his first two-year stint. He qualified via Q School after a year in the amateur ranks and hanging out with Jack O’Connell and Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy) and this time, he admitted he had an excellent first season, reaching his first quarter-final in Riga and qualified for the German Masters by coming back from 4-0 down to beat Kyren Wilson 5-4.
He said in a recent interview that:
“If someone said at the start I’d finish the season on the points I did I would’ve snapped their hand off! If I have another season like I did this year it should put me comfortably inside the top 55.”
Hopefully, he gets in the Top 64. For more information on his recent interview, please click here: http://sportsbyte.sunderland.ac.uk/astley-close-to-top-64-after-excellent-season/.
Alexander Ursenbacher: Rank: N/A
He found his first stint as a snooker player as a 17 year-old after winning his place via Q School in 2013. He won only two matches in the 2013/2014 season and another two matches in next season, relegating him from tour. So that’s the end of the Swiss prospect, he can go back eating cheese, ski on a regular basis and live his life building cuckoo clocks right? Second thoughts – why didn’t he do this, that would be awesome!
Anyway, he qualified for this snooker season and the next by winning the EBSA European Under-21 Snooker Championship. He did so quite convincingly, ranked No. 1 seed in the knock-out rounds and whitewashed Estonian Andres Petrov 5-0 in the semis before beating Welsh stalwart Jackson Page 6-4. Not only that, but when he was invited to the World Championship qualifying rounds, he beat No. 31 Robert Milkins 10-6; won the decider against No. 66 Scott Donaldson to reach the final round, only to be beaten by Yan Bingtao 10-4.
Already he seems to be a much better player than he was back in 2013 and am sure he would’ve picked up some valuable experience in the amateur ranks. He will be a very interesting player to watch and will no doubt feel fewer nerves this time around.
Soheil Vahedi – Rank: N/A
Probably the least known player on this list, this 28-year-old-chap is the second Iranian ever to be on the snooker tour before current No. 59 Hossein Vafaei. He’s been playing snooker for quite a while, as he almost qualified seven years ago, but lost the 2009 World Amateur U-21 Snooker Championship final against Noppon Saengkham, who is now 64th in the world rankings.
Vahedi finally qualified by winning the 2016 World Amateur Snooker Championship. Having won all of his group games, he overcame many young talents in Poland’s Mateusz Baranowski, Scotland’s Chris Totten and Northern Ireland’s Declan Brennan as well as Ireland’s Michael Judge and thrashing former pro and current moaner Andrew Pagett 8-1 in the final, who made a Crucible appearance in 2011. The fact that two of his opponents (Totten & Kleckers) are on the main tour as well shows that Vahedi has the upper hand. He clearly has a lot of bottle since three of his knock-out wins were from deciders.
After seeing how impressive Hossein Vafaei was last season without being hampered by visa problems and surely going to go up the rankings, it will be fascinating to see Vahedi follow suit. Just hope there won’t be visa problems that could hinder him on his debut season.
Yuan Sijun – Rank: N/A
He is one of seven Chinese players who qualified for this season and one of five among them will make their competitive debuts as well. Think I need a lie-down.
Like many Chinese snooker players who are groomed for stardom, he hugely benefitted from being a wildcard warrior, regularly appearing in ranking tournaments as such since the age of 13. His presence came to light when he beat Andrew Higginson 5-3 and then thrashed Martin Gould 5-0 in the 2016 China Open at the age of 15 under the subtle BBC headline: China Open: Martin Gould beaten by Chinese schoolboy Yuan Sijun. Last season his impressive performances continued in the 2016 Six-red World Championship and remarkably, thrashed Martin Gould AGAIN 5-0 as a wildcard in the 2016 Shanghai Masters and then Ian Burns in the 2017 China Open.
After many attempts in international tournaments (Quarter-Finals in the 2016 IBSF World Under-21 Snooker Championship and Last 32 in the 2016 IBSF World Snooker Championship), Yuan finally qualifies by winning the ACBS Asian Under-21 Snooker Championship by winning 6-2 against Fan Zhengyi. Now at 17 years of age and seeing Zhou and Yan prosper likely many flowers during the entire summer (or in England, a summer is 9th April 2017) Yuan will be confident. But seeing fellow compatriots Cao Yupeng and Wang Yuchen struggle last season, he will realise that the main tour is a massive leap. What do we think? We will have to wait and see………
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