2023 European Masters – Day 5

Monique Professional snooker tournament

This is WST report on the fifth and last day of the 2023 European Masters Qualifiers

Bingham Qualifies For Nuremberg

Stuart Bingham secured his place in the final stages of the BetVictor European Masters after a 5-2 win over Jamie Clarke at qualifying in Leicester.

Essex cueman Bingham is a former finalist in the event, but he lost out to Judd Trump 9-7 in the 2017 title match. The 2015 World Champion produced a strong showing this afternoon to book his slot in Nuremberg for this year’s final stages. Bingham fired in breaks of 75, 52 and 68 on his way to victory over Welshman Clarke.

Adam Duffy staged a brilliant fightback to shock Marco Fu 5-4. Hong Kong’s Fu fired in breaks of 135 and 101 on his way to establishing a 4-2 lead, but Sheffield potter Duffy claimed the last three frames to qualify.

Iran’s Hossein Vafaei eased to a 5-1 win over Rod Lawler to seal his place in Nuremberg, while Joe O’Connor whitewashed Rebecca Kenna 5-0 to earn his spot.

Now this really angers me. Eighth matches were played yesterday, only four are reported on. Five young Chinese players were in action, there is not ONE word about them in this account of the day’s action. Now, WST … doesn’t the “W” in your name stand for “World”? Do you know that the UK isn’t the “navel” of the world? When will you finally live by your name, WORLD Snooker Tour?

Right (sort of) …

I put this on twitter already, but will put it here again: “Well played Adam Duffy, but so sad to see Marco Fu struggling so much. He played brilliant stuff early in the match, couldn’t pot a long ball towards the end. Didn’t even try for snookers. Eye fatigue?“. Marco is not just a brilliant player, he’s a very nice person as well, and a great ambassador for Hong Kong. What I saw yesterday really saddened me.

It’s absolutely baffling that there isn’t even a mention of Xu Si’s 5-2 win over Alex Ursenbacher. But, yeah, a Chinese playing a Swiss. Who cares? Nothing to see there.

Lyu Haotian beat Fan Zhengyi by 5-4 in an excellent and entertaining match. It’s a pity that they drew each other and that Fan will not be in Nuremberg. This was quality, positive, attacking but not reckless snooker. I like both players but I’m glad Lyu won. Yesterday, I saw glimpses of the player I met in 2012, the absolutely amazing kid I watched in Yixing: fearless, creative and supremely talented. It’s easy to forget that Lyu is only 25. He was far too young when arriving in the UK, alone, at a time when the “academies” didn’t exist. He went through terrible things. But hopefully the scars are healing. He has time on his side and a lot to offer.

I plan to watch the Xing Zihao v Peng Yisong match today.

The last “forgotten” match saw Dylan Emery beat Barry Pinches by 5-2. Pinches replaced Liam Highfield. Dylan is 22, he’s a young promising player. He played well in the 2023 ranking Championship League. He had the misfortune of being in the same Group as Willo who wiped the floor with everyone on that day. But Dylan won his other two matches, beat Ken Doherty and came second in Group 6. Dylan’s “reward” for his efforts yesterday is a clash with John Higgins at the main venue. At least he will not be “ignored” then, I suppose.

All detailed results are on snooker.org

And, yes, it’s a very international team of fans that keeps everyone up-to-date with the scores when UK-centric WST fails us all .

7 thoughts on “2023 European Masters – Day 5”

  1. I’m on holidays so I see nothing, but in the end it’s not too exciting to report on Ursenbacher: if he draws Ronnie he beats him, otherwise see you in Qschool in 2 years.

  2. Yes, it’s UK-centric, but I think the main problem is that WST are understaffed, and their one reporter can’t keep track of all the matches. Perhaps he found the new scoreboard system frustrating. There were only 8 matches yesterday, so it could have been possible to look up the progress of all of them. But there probably should have been a mention of Arnie Ursenbacher (a European) and Fan Zhengyi (a former champion) in coverage of the ‘European Masters’. Generally, modern media tend to highlight older, more famous players: ‘recognition factor’ is everything.

    Ursenbacher seems to have an alignment problem, but Xu played extremely well. There’s a photo of a practice match between Fan Zhengyi and Lyu Haotian taken few days ago by Victoria; it’s never easy to play a real match in those circumstances, and they missed a few. Indeed, Peng Yisong and Xing Zihao are also based in Victoria’s Acedemy. Peng was just a bit more experienced.

    All players this week had some difficulty with the tables, which were set up completely differently from the Rasson tables used in the Summer Championship League. Players were missing forcing shots with side-spin that they could have rolled if there had been any pace in the table at all.

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