Higgins Out Of Shanghai Masters

The writing was on the wall when Liu Song was placed on standby for the first two events of the season last week but it has now been confirmed by Snooker Scene Blog that world number one John Higgins will be absent from the upcoming Shanghai Masters tournament…

Aside from the obvious, namely that Higgins will not be able to play in the tournament, the other consequence of this decision is that Jamie Cope, Mike Dunn, Rod Lawler and Simon Bedford (NOT James Wattana), will all move up a bracket in the qualifying draw and have to play one less match in order to make it to the venue. Indeed in Jamie’s place he will have to play none as he will be seeded 16th for the event!

What this also means is that Neil Robertson is now tantalisingly close to become the first ‘new’ world number one since Ronnie O’Sullivan back in 2002/3 and just the eighth world number one ever! It appears highly probable that Higgins will also be absent from the World Open but until this is confirmed then I shall leave his minimum points for the tournament in place on my rankings page. Even with those points however it seems to be only a matter of time until Neil’s ascent is confirmed. I will update the rankings fully in due course to reflect who will not be participating in the next two PTC events but I have amended the minimum points now to show John’s position.

Congratulations to the 35% who voted for Neil on my poll back in November 2009! Probably anyway…