Nutcharut Wongharuthai, Mink, won a hard fough and tense final yesterday evening to become Women World Champion for the first time and earn a two years tour card for next season. She beat Wendy Jans on the last black. Wendy, from Belgium in a 13 times European Women Champion. Mink had beaten On Yee Ng in the quarter finals, whilst Wendy had beaten Reanne Evans, the defending champion, at the same stage.
Congratulations Mink!
Here is the report on WWS website:
Wongharuthai is World Women’s Snooker Champion
Nutcharut Wongharuthai has won the World Women’s Snooker Championship for the first time following a dramatic 6-5 victory against Wendy Jans decided on the final black at the Ding Junhui Snooker Academy in Sheffield.
Staged for the first time since Reanne Evans’ claimed a record 12th world title in June 2019, the tournament saw 50 of the best female players from around the world compete across four days to lift the Mandy Fisher Trophy.
A breakthrough victory for Wongharuthai sees the 22-year-year-old become the 13th different winner and the first ever Thai player to win the world title. She also becomes the first new winner of the tournament since 2015 and the first player other than Reanne Evans or Ng On Yee to win the title in 19 years.
She is now set to join Reanne Evans and Ng On Yee as the latest female player on the World Snooker Tour, as she will be offered a two-year professional Tour card from the start of the 2022/23 season.
The world number three came into the tournament in a rich vein of form following her second ranking success at last month’s British Women’s Open and her run to the quarter-finals of the WPBSA Q Tour event just two weeks ago, during which she defeated five male players.
With the top two seeds Reanne Evans and Ng On Yee having exited at the quarter-final stages on a thrilling Sunday evening, a new champion was guaranteed as the tournament entered its final day. Jans booked her place in the final for the first time with a 5-2 victory against English debutant Jamie Hunter, while Wongharuthai secured comfortable passage to the title match with a 5-1 success against Rebecca Kenna.
It was the third seed Wongharuthai – also known as Mink – who made the stronger start as she claimed two of the three frames, looking to improve upon her final run at the 2019 edition when she lost out to Reanne Evans in the final.
Back came Jans with a match-high break of 97, before she added each frame either side of the mid-session interval to lead by two for the first time at 4-2. As the next two frames were shared, Jans moved to the brink of the title for the first time at 5-3, but Wongharuthai, who cites Mark Selby as one of her snooker heroes, would display Selby-like qualities to hit back to force what would prove to be a nail-biting decider.
Both players had chances and it appeared as though Wongharuthai was over the line – only for Jans to earn the penalty points she required on the final brown in order to be able to win the match having needed a snooker. Having potted brown, blue and pink however, a long black would elude her and it was Wongharuthai who would sink the final ball to become world champion for the first time.
Her coronation represents the completion of a journey for a player who began to play snooker aged at 10 years old, before making her debut at the 2017 World Championship, during which she showed her potential by completing the tournament high break of 90. A year later she would reach her first ranking event final at the British Open, before contesting the World Championship final for the first time on home soil in 2019, losing out to Reanne Evans at the Hi-End Snooker Club.
She is now looking forward to joining the World Snooker Tour for the first time from the start of next season and believes that she can be successful and continue to improve her game on the professional circuit.
Wendy Jans 5-6 Nutcharut Wongharuthai
40-51; 72(31)-38; 46-60; 84(84)-4; 69-44; 71-32; 39-67; 74(30, 39)-15; 18-69; 13-81(32); 53-65(30)
I’m not too sure where the “97” in that report comes from. Wendy’s highest break in the final was 84, and it was also her highest break in the tournament. The only 97 made during this event was made by On Yee Ng.
The match was streamed on Facebook, with a lot of Thai supporters active in the “chat” despite the ungodly hours in Thailand.
It wasn’t the greatest standard and it attracted derogatory comments from some male alledged snooker fans. It angered me, although this was to be expected. Those two women were competing for a tour card. It was probably the biggest match of their life, they were under pressure. They were playing on a star table, fitted to the main tour competitions standards. These are circumstances and conditions they are certainly not very used to. Some guy was saying that he has seen similar standard in the club. Well, possibly, by guys playing for fun under “club standards”. This is something else. Those guys would likely overhit everything on a very fine cloth and find out that the pockets are quite unforgiving on the competition tables.
Mink can play better. She played in the Q-tour recently, as mentioned. Amongst the 5 male players she beat, twowere two former pros: Daniel Wells and Billy Castle. Yesterday she was understandably tense and so was Wendy as well.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
You were rooting for Jans, Monique?
Not particularly Christian. I have met both of them, and like them both. Wendy is 38, will turn 39 in June. She’s 13 times an European Champion, won the IBSF Women World Championship 7 times. She owns a club, “The Maxx” in Neerpelt. She’s a very good player but is unlikely to get much better. Mink on the other hand is only 22. She practices at the High End snooker club, same as Noppon Saengkham. The owner of that club, Gappa Gappa is absolutely passionate about the sport and will give her the best possible support. I believe that Mink has a huge potential to progress. Therefore I’m happy she won.
That makes sense.
I am very much looking forward to seeing her on the main tour and hope she won’t be humiliated and will get used to conditions fast. I find it depressing that women play in those small setting very short matches with no audience, often not on Tour-standard tables and when they got their WC for the Crucible qualifying, it did not go far and it “reinforced” the opinion that they can’t compete with the men. Well, I don’t see why not given the right circumstances (i.e. not being “relegated” to those small settings), but even if they can’t let it be proven in a correct competition, not decided in advance by assumption. Mink said she wanted to play on the main tour, she is young and had not spent a long career on the women’s tour, like Reanne, so I hope for the best.
Well the conditions at the Ding Academy were probably better than the conditions for the Welsh Open qualifiers today (in Wolverhampton)! But of course no top-16 players are there so nobody cares.
I’m not so sure about the “nobody cares” reason … the conditions have been terrible almost all week at the Players Championship, allegedly a prestige elite tournament. Why? I doubt that “nobody cared”. There are probably more than just one reason. The venue itself of course is to be considered. Getting things right at Ally Pally for example have proven tricky over the years and the crowd makes a huge difference. The fitters noticed a significant higher level of humidity whener Ronnie or one of the very big stars were playing. In another venue where I once took pictures, the floor was uneven… The other factor is that I feel that the fitters basically never stop. They likely have no time ti fine-tune the tables. Tables rolling off has been an issue all week at the Players Championship this year.
And that was with only two match tables…
Yes Monique. I don’t know if the table fitters are overworked. But I think some of the problems with the tables in Wolverhampton were to do with the temperature – it was too cold. Maybe it’s the impact of fuel costs at the moment?
Anyway, if Mink is hoping to enjoy playing in professional conditions with enthusiastic crowds, she may be very disappointed. Unless she draws a top-16 player, she’ll most likely spend the whole season behind closed doors. Only in York Barbican, where she’ll get a top player such as Trump or Murphy in the 1st round of the UK Championship (not shown on BBC). Apart from that only the British Open (best-of-5) and Shoot-out will be at main venues, following the announcement of the English Open format.
I don’t know what she expects and hope she knows what she might find. But while it is true that qualifiers as such should be abolished, she will most likely get TV exposure as for example Eurosport is covering the Welsh Open qualifiers now. And maybe not immediately and not easily, but we should not assume she will lose all her matches as we don’t think that players who got there from qualifying school will all be losers and disappointed: it is also possible that she will win some of her qualifying matches and make it into the main venue. In any case, she is the one who has not had her career “damaged” by low standards already before she gets to the main tour, so if anyone, she has a chance to improve and I wish her the best.
In any case, not having to start her main tour career in front of big crowds might be good for her in the beginning, as she can’t be much used to them on the women’s tour. 😛😝
Yes, very well done to Mink. She came back from 5-3 behind, and very nearly lost in the decider: Wendy Jans missed a long black for the title, after successfully getting a snooker.
However, Mink will really need to play better than she did yesterday if she is to compete on the main tour. She’s won that match with a highest break of 32. She’s certainly better than that, as her previous matches showed, but playing under pressure is something she will have to get used to quickly. Nobody wants to see her get humiliated.
Before that Jans missed a relatively simple red on the cushion with getting on black not that difficult as well. But she hit it a bit too hard unfortunately as she looked confident to clear up. And she had some very good long pots. In my opinion they both were quite good in laying snookers as well, despite apparently being not used to the table standard from what I’ve read on here. I guess that may be a departement they practice a lot. The problem was the positional play, probably down to the importance of the match.
Yes after she missed the last red (I won’t repeat what she said!), both players did well. It was probably the best part of the whole match. She didn’t get an angle on the pink, but many top players have fallen into that under such pressure. Ultimately she was a little unlucky to stick the black up after she missed. She’ll remember that shot for the rest of her life…