While Asia may be taking centre stage in the snooker world at present, closer to home World Snooker have today made public the Player’s Pack (.pdf) for the PTC 5-9 events, the main points of interest being regarding the venues for those events…
As previously confirmed, PTC5 will see Barry Pinches attempt to defend his title at the Academy in Sheffield towards the end of September while the very next weekend the players will be in action in Polish capital Warsaw for the first time in a ranking event.
During what is undoubtedly a busy time for the players, the next weekend will see them in action at the South West Snooker Academy in Gloucester for PTC7, the second event to be staged there following the PTC2.
A fortnight later however is where it really gets interesting as it looks as though the PTC8 event may be staged in Killarney, the city which staged the 6-Reds World Championship back in 2009 as well as a World Series event earlier on that year.
The subsequent PTC9 event will then be held in Antwerp, Belgium in November immediately following the qualifiers for the UK Championship.
While we will not know how successful such events will be until they are staged, no doubt the presence of Poland’s Kacper Filipiak and Belgian duo Bjorn Haneveer and Luca Brecel will help to boost the interest levels in those events. It is also good to see more snooker come to the Republic of Ireland following the success of the PTC Finals there last season.
Elsewhere everything appears to be as expected, though it is interesting to note that each of the above events will be seeded according to the Order of Merit after the PTC4 event in Furth. It could be important then to be up as high as possible in the Order of Merit come that time.
It has also been confirmed that Eurosport will be broadcasting from one table at the PTC6, 8 and 9 events.