Although I did post this earlier in the week as part of my general round-up of the latest bits of news on the snooker circuit, for those who may have missed it tucked away in that article, the fixtures for the wildcard stages of the season’s first two ranking events have now been confirmed…
In Australia, Andrew Higginson will face Matthew Bolton, while recent World Championship quarter-finalist Dominic Dale will face Johl Younger in the two wildcard matches at that event.
While I am not overly familiar with either player, Bolton appears to be a player more widely known for his achievements in billiards than snooker, Neil Robertson tweeting earlier today that he has broken Bob Marshall’s 50 year old Australian record break with a 736 (although that would appear to contradict this article).
Younger meanwhile first played professional snooker events as far back as 1996, for example defeating a young Stuart Bingham at the 1998 Grand Prix. He was also a wildcard at the 2012 Australian Goldfields Open, losing 5-2 to Cao Yupeng on that occasion.
As of yet, a wildcard has yet to win a match during the three previous stagings of this event, so the odds would appear to be stacked against Bolton or Younger causing an upset in 2014.
There are traditionally more upsets at the wildcard stages of events in China and at the Wuxi Classic there will be four such matches.
Most notably, Andrew Norman will face the very highly rated Zhao Xintong, in what could be a dangerous match for the On Q man, while Yu Delu, Scott Donaldson and Robbie Williams will also be required to win matches against Yan Bingtao, Chen Zifan and Niu Zhuang respectively if they are to make it to the last 32.