Following on from last week’s announcement last week that Graeme Dott is to miss this week’s Australian Goldfields Open tournament in Bendigo, it has today been confirmed over at World Snooker that Ronnie O’Sullivan has also withdrawn from the event…
While it cannot be declared a shock to see O’Sullivan pull out of one of the overseas events, apparently O’Sullivan did set off for Australia but upon his arrival in Bangkok, he reportedly elected to make an immediate return to the UK having suffered from neck and back problems on the plane.
So what does this mean for the tournament? Interestingly while normally Ronnie’s last 32 opponent Dominic Dale would receive a bye through to the last 16, on this occasion the powers that be have elected to instead move wildcard Steve Mifsud across the draw to play Dominic in the last 32, meaning that Matt Selt goes straight on to play John Higgins in the last 32 stage.
Click here to view the amended draw.