FEATURED: The Challenge Tour

It’s been a while since I wrote an article. The Riga Masters is coming up and everyone looking forward to their wonderful festivities (trust me, the fish there is fantastic). Apart from the professional tour, there is also The Challenge Tour!

For years, everyone was bleating on about snooker being on its last legs in the United Kingdom. It’s with good reason. Snooker clubs were closing around the country and they were worries over the lack of strength in depth of players. Thankfully, due to a lot of nagging from the snooker fanbase and especially from SnookerBacker, Barry Hearn implemented The Challenge Tour!

Basically, the Challenge Tour is the secondary circuit to the professional tour. Each event consists of up to 64-72 amateurs, prioritised by their performances in Q School. In this case, the Top 5 best-performing warriors are David Lilley, Dechawat Poomjaeng, James Cahill, Adam Duffy and Luke Simmonds. There have been two events so far, with the third being in the Latvian capital of Riga, which is in Latvia. 🙂

So what’s been happening?

CONS

Well, there are some initial problems.

The first problem was how soon Event 1 was organised after Q School. Only 59 entered the tournament in Burton upon Trent, which started only a few days after the final event of Q School. That included a lot of the top amateurs, which meant players like Iulian Boiko and Heather Clare participated despite not having won a single match at Q School. Weirdly for me, some amateurs like Billy Ginn weren’t invited to the event, despite the event not being full. Never understood that.

Your guess is as good as mine. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth really when we've all paid 1k entry fee, yet people who have been invited to play will most likely have just paid the £50 CT entry fee.

— Billy Ginn 💙 (@billyrm84) June 3, 2018

The other thing some people got up in arms about is the conditions. A lot of players thought that the Challenge Tour should be treated like the professional tour. So the fact that there weren’t referees and scoreboards at the events caused a fair amount of debate. It also stirred up quite a bit among the old guard too, who claimed somewhere along the lines of walking through snow, sleet and Millwall supporters to battle someone to the death for a table. Back in the day…………

This makes me laugh!! When I was an amateur we only played in clubs, a half decent table was a luxury and light whites were very common!! Amateurs really need to get a grip and decide if they really have what it takes to become pro!! https://t.co/86wC5DjzF6

— Joe Perry (@joegentlemanjoe) June 1, 2018

The last thing is the finances. Latvia, Germany and Hungary are the hosts for these Challenge Tour events. A lot of money will be spent on travelling and there are a lot of risks when the top prize for each event is £2,000. Players will be too priced out to attend. Phil O’Kane claimed that only 21 out of the Top 64 players entered the event. I doubt a lot of spectators will attend these events in droves. Hopefully, it won’t be too demoralising!

21 entries in to Latvia 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

— Phil O'Kane (@philokane147) July 19, 2018

PROS

BUT.

You can argue that amateurs are lucky to have a secondary circuit at all. This is the first thing organised since the Pontins International Open Series. These ten events provide not only match experience all players crave to be better but all experience playing abroad, since travelling and coping with the mental stresses of jet-lag are part of the professional’s life. The Challenge Tour provides all that.

Last but not least, there are now more opportunities to qualify for the tour. The problem with qualifying for tour (for British amateurs at least) requires travelling to international tournaments, where there is just one place to win the tour card. With Q School, there are 12 places out of over 100 players. With its random draw, you can say that the 12 qualifiers aren’t the best and most talented qualifiers but rather whoever has the nicer draw or have the stamina, perseverance, and belief to win. At least after 10 events, you feel like you won your card through your talent, in my opinion. No-one wants to completely rely upon a terrifying gauntlet like Q School. It’s just not healthy. At least with the Challenge Tour, you can guarrantee that the two players who qualify for tour got there by merit, because of their performances over ten events.

According to World Snooker, Event 1 winner Brandon Sargeant says that the Challenge Tour will help him hone his skills in a matchplay environment:http://www.worldsnooker.com/brandon-sargeant-qa/

“To be able to get regular match experience against some of the players I have faced will really stand me in good stead.”

Former UK Championship semi-finalist David Grace ended up winning Event 2. Someone who regularly organises pro-ams in England, he has put a lot of effort into the amateur scene. Some of the things he said in his Q&A I can’t put better myself, so here is an extract: http://www.worldsnooker.com/david-grace-qa/

“The Challenge Tour is an absolutely fantastic addition. I can’t believe the flak it has been getting from some of the players. The conditions are fantastic. We are playing in professional conditions. […] the fact that we have tournaments across Europe in places like Latvia will also help players get used to the travelling side of the professional game. […] As long as the players have the right attitude, then this tour will be very good for them. But if they have the wrong attitude they won’t get anything out of it. People complain that matches are only best of five and that we don’t have referees. We aren’t entitled to referees. We all know how to use a scoreboard, it’s not rocket science.”

FUTURE

Since Challenge Tour is new, it will take a few years for it to work incredibly well. Let’s be honest, we shouldn’t expect this to be perfect and expect to meet the needs, demands and opinions of players and bloggers (I mean, heaven forbid)! Despite it being slightly rocky, I think the Challenge Tour has made a good start – they are getting kids playing regularly early into the season. That is much more than the past few seasons and I am very excited to see what on earth will happen and see who will qualify at the end of the tunnel.

So how can the Challenge Tour improve? The venues? David Grace organised a recent pro-am and 119 snooker players entered. Among them are an 11-year-old, a 13-year-old, a Thai female entrant and World No. 25 Xiao Guodong. If that event could attract such a diverse and talented range, surely that would be the perfect venue next year? Sure, we have Budapest coming up, but would venues in Hungary receive the same amount of turnout, especially since it’s an unknown snooker country. I just don’t think to introduce the amateur before the professional game is the way to go.

119 entries today for the NSC Pro-Am!! #WelcomeBack #SnookerLoopy pic.twitter.com/W3bUEwSM4i

— David Grace (@daveg147) July 22, 2018

I thought Gibraltar would be a perfect venue. Cheap to get to; having a ranking tournament alongside; and decent weather! There is another reason to keep your eyes peeled for the Riga Masters. Moreover, there’ll be a preview on the main ranking event. Until next time!