Following on from yesterday’s post highlighting the issue of amateur pair Jak Jones and Eden Sharav not being seeded for the upcoming PTC5 event despite finishing inside the top 64, World Snooker have today explained their logic via the medium of Twitter. Click below to see what they said and my thoughts…
World Snooker’s Twitter feed said:
“PTC5: As per entry pack, each event will consist of 128 players; up to 100 Main Tour players topped up by the best amateurs from the PTC OoM. PTC5 had 202 entrants (97 tour players and 105 amateurs). 97 tour players were topped up to 100 with the highest 3 amateur players from the OoM who were seeded in accordance with their OoM position.”
When I first saw this tweet earlier on I have to say that I could not remember seeing that in the player’s pack but having read the pdf further this evening it appears that World Snooker are quite correct. It was stated in there that up to 100 Main Tour players would be topped up by the best amateurs from the PTC Order of Merit.
You can view that here.
Having seen that then, it is evident that this does appear to have been the position from the outset (though there is an argument to say that nowhere in the pack does it explicitly say that amateurs in Jak and Eden’s shoes would have to qualify), though whether that is the fair and correct way to go about it I am not too sure.
At the least I think that the information has not been clearly communicated, not just to fans, but more importantly to the players themselves as several have asked me about it even before this issue arose and few seemed to be clear on it. The attitude I had taken was to wait and see what the draw would bring.
It is true that this requirement was stated in the player’s pack however the fact that enough people had gained the impression that the top 64 including all amateurs would be seeded is indicative of the fact that the criteria has not been made clear enough.
Taking the wider issue of whether or not it is fair, it seems a strange one (unless there is a good scheduling reason why), to say that on the one hand there will be 64 seeds but then to exclude players who have met that criteria based on the amount of entries to a given event.
As was pointed out yesterday, could they not have put 102 players through to the last 128 and amended the qualifying draw slightly?
Strictly speaking not in this instance as to deviate from the Player’s Pack after PTC4 just because of the number of amateurs who had finished inside the top 64 would not be sensible either, but you do have to question the method employed in the first place.
I do feel for both Jak and Eden as the PTC events are hard enough for the amateurs as it is, both financially and in terms of winning matches and hopefully this will be looked at again in the future.