FEATURED: My thoughts on the Shanghai Masters

So the Shanghai Masters! We had the Shanghai Masters as a ranking event with a tiered qualifying system. Then we had the Shanghai Masters as a ranking event with a completely flat draw.

Now we have the Shanghai Masters as a non-ranking event with the following:

The Top 16 in the world rankings
Four of the highest-ranked Chinese players outside of the Top 16 four players (Liang Wenbo, Yan Bingtao, Xiao Guodong, and Zhou Yuelong)
Two players from the CBSA China Tour (TBC)
Two from China’s Amateur Masters series (TBC)

It is perhaps inevitable that China want a prestigious equivalent of the Masters in Alexandra Palace. It event would also require Chinese participation too, something ranking events can’t always guarrantee. They are also ramping it up a few notches. For starters, the winning prize money is a whopping £200,000, the same as Mark Allen’s winnings in the 2018 Masters. The semi-finals are a best-of-19s and the final is the best-of-21 frames, much more than the current Masters. Give it a few years – the Triple Crown could transform into the Quadruple Crown if the revamped Shanghai Masters grows to amazing heights!

However, I do wish it was a different event other than the Shanghai Masters. To be honest, the organisers and World Snooker have butchered the event quite badly in my opinion. The reason why I am such a sceptic is because the Shanghai Masters between 2007 – 2017 was already one of the best tournaments in the calender, producing some epic finals and awesome comebacks.

Who can forget Dominic Dale winning his first ranking title in 2007? Or John Higgins storming from 7-2 down to win the decider in 2012. Or the first-ever ranking final involving two Chinamen a year after that? Lastly, this was the birthplace of Kyren Wilson’s first ranking title, who had to go through tiered qualifying and won eight matches to clinch the trophy!

I personally liked the tiered-qualifying system in the Shanghai Masters because that is what made it more unique and fought for. This is especially since it was the only event to have one aside from the World Championship while ever other event implemented the flat draw system. Then of course it reverted to just that in 2018 and it was never really the same to me in that year alone.

The change to make it non-ranking made me more sad to be honest. It did feel it was ripping its past to shreads simply because of its ambitions to be even bigger. If this was a brand new event, that’s fine – I did hope last year’s Hong Kong Masters would take up that mantle. But they just trampled over the fact it was a ranking event. Would be nice to have both, not one or the other.