Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen has today become the first man to successfully defend a full-ranking event title since John Higgins at the 2011 Welsh Open, by defeating former UK Champion Matthew Stevens 10-4 at the Haikou World Open. Claiming his second ranking event title overall, Mark takes home the top prize of £85,000, as well as moving up to a career-high fifth in the latest projected seedings…
Two days to go at the 2013 Haikou World Open and we are down to the semi-finals, as four former ranking event winners will battle it out for the trophy this weekend. It has been a strange tournament, with flashing lights, rain, overzealous photographers and flies all interfering with play, but despite all of that, it promises to be an exciting climax to the event…
Three days down at the 2013 Haikou World Open and with the last 16 line-up now complete, there is no shortage of quality remaining in the tournament, with just Mark Williams and Mark Davis of the top 16 to fall, in addition to the absent Ali Carter. Click below for a round-up of the tournament so far…
ITV4 is to show full coverage of snooker’s Haikou World Open, which begins next Monday.
Extensive live coverage of the tournament in China begins on Monday 25 February, running from 6.10am to 3pm each day until the final on Sunday March 3. It marks a return to snooker for the ITV network, as the sport’s first ranking event shown since the 1993 British Open.
Ahead of the start of the Haikou World Open this Monday, it has been announced that recent German Masters winner Ali Carter has been forced to withdraw from the tournament on medical grounds, related to his ongoing battle with Crohn’s disease.
Hopefully Ali will be fighting fit in the near future and in particular ahead of his next scheduled tournament, the PTC Grand Finals, where he is set to meet John Higgins at the last 32 stage.
Ali’s withdrawal means that over in Haikou, the winner of the wildcard round contest between Nigel Bond and Zhu Yinghui, will receive a bye to the last 16.
For those of you who may not have seen it earlier today, good news coming from Dave Hendon at Snooker Scene Blog, who has revealed that this year’s Haikou World Open will be broadcast by ITV, marking their their return to ranking event snooker for the first time in 20 years.
With the BBC down to just three professional tournaments these days, it is important that snooker maintains its presence on terrestrial television and this can only help in that regard. As someone who writes a blog, for all of the tournaments in existence these days, the increased amount of interest when one of the terrestrial events is ongoing is noticeable, and hopefully this news will boost the level of interest in the World Open, in the UK at least.
It is also pleasing to see that Clive Everton and Neal Foulds will be among those commentating, arguably the two best commentators around at the moment, while Peter Drury, who has been involved with snooker in the past for ITV, will also be on hand.
A lot of people have been reminiscing over ITV’s previous coverage of ranking events in recent times, though for me, I can only really remember their coverage of the Nations Cup towards the end of the 1990’s, as the ‘dream team’ of Scotland did battle against the other home nations.
Times have changed since those days, but it is good to have ITV back on board, hopefully this will lead to even bigger things going forward…
After a couple of enforced days away from the blog, click below for a review of the 2013 Haikou World Open qualifiers, which concluded on Friday, together with links to the updated tournament drawsheet and latest projected seedings…
Today saw the start of the final snooker event of 2012 as the Haikou World Open qualifiers got underway in Sheffield. Click below for a summary of the key scores and stories from the opening round…