Here is WST report on yesterday’s action in Wigan:
Gilbert Tops Hill
David Gilbert scored his first win in a knock-out ranking event match this season as he thrashed Aaron Hill 4-0 to reach the final stages of the Cazoo British Open.
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Gilbert suffered a surprise 5-1 reverse against Marco Fu in last month’s BetVictor European Masters qualifiers, but bounced back strongly with an impressive display against Hill, highlighted by breaks of 100 and 72. The world number 19 goes into the random draw for the last 64 of the tournament which runs from September 26 to October 2 in Milton Keynes.
Ryan Day top scored with 65 in a 4-1 win over Rebecca Kenna while Zhang Jiankang saw off Reanne Evans 4-0 with a top break of 70.
Zhou Yuelong beat Jenson Kendrick 4-1 with a top break of 80 and is one of 13 Chinese players to have won their qualifying match so far in Wigan.
Anthony Hamilton rounded off a 4-0 win over Jimmy White with a break of 100.
Gilbert played really well against Aaron Hill. He must have put some good work in over the last weeks.
Reanne Evans was really poor against Zhang Jiankang. Zhang himself looked vulnerable at the start of the match but grew in confidence as his opponent failed to convert her opportunities.
Rebecca Kenna was second best to Ryan Day, but took a lot of positives out of her match. Here is what she shared on Facebook:
I believe that Rebecca has a real chance to progress quite significantly on the main tour. She’s not a young girl, she’s grounded and contrary to Mink for instance she doesn’t have huge expectations weighting on her shoulders (other than her own of course).
The Andy Lee v Barry Pinches match was extremely hard fougth, quite tactical and very, very close. Not everyone’s cup of tea (or coffee in my case) but I enjoyed it.
Jimmy White should probably have won the second frame against Anthony Hamilton. He didn’t and after that the match had “game over” written all over it.
Now about the other and mainly bad news…
Phil Haigh on twitter yesterday posted that Ronnie was suffering from “tennis elbow”, which is indeed what Jason Francis hald told me earlier. It’s worrying news because he had it for some time and it’s not something that goes away easily. Despite its name, the condition is not necessarily caused bu playing with a racket … actually it’s caused by “repetitive mouvements” of the shoulder, elbow, and wrist and as you might guess, practising snooker is just that. Resting the arm is a big part of the treatment. Healing is not a fast process either.
WST has announced three withdrawals from the European Masters:
Li Hang, Chang Bingyu and Lei Peifan have pulled out of next week’s BetVictor European Masters due to visa issues.
Their last-64 opponents – Zhao Xintong, Scott Donaldson and Marco Fu – will all receive a bye to the last 32 in Germany.
From what transpired on social media, Hossein Vafaei is in visa trouble as well. It seems to me that those visa problems are worse since Brexit.
Also, regarding visas, I hear that the two professional players from Pakistan – Aif and Iqbal – haven’t got their UK visas yet. They applied about 6 weeks ago,
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Kinda weird that Ronnie would all of a sudden have tennis elbow from snooker, given that he’s been playing snooker for 40ish years and (as far as we know?) has never had problems with tennis elbow before.
In other Ronnie news, some quotes showed up in yesterday’s news about how Ronnie wishes he hadn’t won his 7th world championship because of all the (unwanted) attention/pressure/expectations that have come with it.
It’s not sudden, it’s been developping for some time. And it might have all started with a minor accident that looked like nothing at the time. I don’t know actually about Ronnie, but something like that happened to someone in my family. And yes. I’ve seen those interviews, and I plan to share that, amongst other things on Monday.
Thanks, Monique. I hope Ronnie can recover, though I know from personal experience that elbow problems don’t really go away (especially if you continue doing the thing that causes the problem).
If there’s a bright side for Ronnie, perhaps it’s that he can enjoy being out of the limelight while recovering, though I had otherwise gotten the impression that he planned to play in just about every event he could play in. After winning #7, part of me thought he might more or less take a year off (like he did in 2012-13), but that didn’t seem to be his plan after all. Now it might happen anyway, for reasons beyond his control…
At this level it’s necessary to have a reliable technique, with many 1000’s of hours practice to develop it. Rebecca Kenna just hasn’t been able to concentrate on her snooker enough, having other commitments as an amateur. She’s got a very long way to catch up.
Reanne Evans was terrible also, which is more surprising. It may have been her most winnable match of the season but she made no impact. However, given the structure which has been established, she looks like having a permanent place on tour via the women’s rankings.
In a recent interview Jason Ferguson highlighted a problem of awarding first-round losers prize-money, in that players could (at least in the past) stay on tour just to take the money without needing to be competitive. Does this same argument apply to the women, or wildcards like Stephen Hendry? They may not earn any prize-money, but benefit through sponsorship by simply being on the tour, even if they lose all their matches.
I’m not buying that claim by Jason Ferguson. In the past, before 2010, most tournaments had a tiered structure. Often the first rounds of qualifiers carried no prize money and there were entry fees as well. So, no way those players, should they lose most of their matches, could stay on tour and make a living out of it. It was however a different story higher up. Even when losing, those players would get the same points and money as the winners coming out of the tier just below theirs, and to make it worse, ranking was set for the whole season. That meant that if you were a 32-17 player for instance, you had a decent guaranteed revenue for the season and usually winning a couple of your first matches was enough to stay in that bracket. That was the main issue: the protection. The “season frozen ranking” also meant that the same two players often collided over the course of a season. That said, most lower ranked players had another job back then. They knew right from the start of the season when they would possibly be due to play, and there were big gaps between the tournaments. I know for instance that Mark King worked on construction sites. Many worked in snooker clubs in some capacity. There wasn’t that much traveling abroad either. Snooker was not their main source of income. Taking that into consideration, yes, the guaranteed prize money was an issue. But not anymore because the calendar is so full that you basically can’t have a side job. I don’t think the women get much in sponsoring at all. Hendry? I’m not sure. Jimmy, Ken? Probably.
Yes, Rebecca Kenna has a sponsor. It may not be much, but it has allowed her to play full-time now. In Hendry’s case, he has endorsements. But, as I’ve said before, the reason why they don’t pay first-round losers is because the money isn’t there. The priority was always to get the top players up to £1M, even during covid with a reduced tournament schedule.