Here is WST report on day 3 at the 2023 Scottish Open Qualifiers
Donaldson Earns Spot In Home Event
Perth’s Scott Donaldson battled from 3-1 down to beat Ashley Hugill 4-3 and earn a place in the final stages of the BetVictor Scottish Open.
World number 51 Donaldson looked as if he might miss out on his home event in Edinburgh when he fell 3-1 behind. But the former Championship League winner came from 48-4 down to take a scrappy 58-minute fifth frame on the colours, and that proved the turning point as he added the sixth then won the decider with a break of 65.
The final stages run from December 11-17 at the Meadowbank Sports Centre in the Scottish capital.
Performance of the day at the qualifying round in Leicester came from Belgium’s up-and-coming Ben Mertens as he beat Ahmed Aly Elsayed 4-0 in 50 minutes with runs of 70, 100, 72 and 139.
Ricky Walden came from 2-0 and 3-2 down to beat Hammad Miah 4-3, while BetVictor English Open runner-up Zhang Anda saw off Andy Hicks 4-2.
Joe O’Connor top scored with 82 in a 4-0 win over Andy Lee, while a run of 116 helped Tom Ford win a Leicester derby against Louis Heathcote 4-1.
As always some results are “missing” but you will find them all on snooker.org.
At least this time not all matches involving non British/Irish players have been “ignored”.
Ben Mertens’ win over the former Pan American champion was indeed some performance. It was basically “one chance” snooker. Of course, Ahmed Aly Elsayed isn’t a top player but, honestly, most players would have struggled with Ben’s scoring power yesterday.
Of the three matches played during the first session of the day, only Zhang Anda’s win over Andy Hicks is reported on. Maybe Ryan Day’s victory over rookie Jiang Jun was expected but the encounter between Lyu Haotian (nr 34) and Joe Perry (nr 26) was the highest profile match of that session and likely to be a close one. Lyu won it by 4-2 from 2-1 down, finishing with breaks of 65, 54 and 64.
Another Scot was in action yesterday, Ross Muir, who was beaten by Dominic Dale (4-1). Ross has been suffering from ocular migraine again in recent times and it’s a very painful and crippling condition. I know by personal experience that migraines are very difficult to treat and painkillers are not really efficient to “tame” them. It’s not just the pain; you can’t see properly and nausea usually comes with it too. Ross is very courageous to try to play under the circumstances. It must be awful.
Jenson Kendrick didn’t win a match in his first year on tour, but got another win yesterday. He beat Anton Kazakov by 4-2 with breaks of 67 and 100. Staying on tour may prove very difficult for Jenson, but, at least, hopefully, with a few wins this season, his first experience as a professional will not be all doom and gloom.
On another old theme…
Lewis yesterday mentioned that the reason for Dechawat Poomjaeng to resign from the main tour was his inability to secure proper sponsoring. Living in the UK is very expensive for non British/Irish players. Unlike the British/Irish players they can’t easily get another job to complement their snooker earnings because the type of visa they get only allows them to work in snooker, and, of course, most can’t live with their parents or family because the said parents/family are in their home country.
I have said this before, I will say it again: there should be no qualifiers. All rounds for all tournaments should be played at the venue, or, if the venue can’t accommodate enough tables, at a suitable place close to it. If Chinese events were “grouped” in pairs, it should be possible to play two events over three weeks, or three weeks and a week-end. China has many young talented players, they deserve to play in front of their local fans, and the fans, I’m sure, would welcome the opportunity to see their own play live. Three weeks surely isn’t too much to ask? And if the next event are in Europe – UK , Ireland or mainland Europe – it could start on the next Thursday or Friday, depending on the format, and be played, from round 1 at or close to the “main venue”. It would allow players to rest and adjust to the time zone again. A Belgian Open could be grouped with the German Masters over 3 weeks as the countries are geographically close. The Tempodrom can’t host more than 32 players, but the qualifiers could be played right before it in Germany, maybe in Fürth, or in the north, maybe Hamburg. The European masters really should travel around to “new” countries. Snooker is very popular in Spain. Finland surely deserves an event. And what about Norway? If that happened, the snooker.org head honcho should be given the honour to present the trophy! He deserves it for life-long service to the sport.
The current calendar structure is such that the first half of the season very much feels like an endless procession of qualifiers, many played with no fans at the venue and no atmosphere. Then, all of a sudden, it’s packed and hectic with traveling across continents and time zones. It’s not good for the players, it’s tiring, mentally taxing, costly and stressful, and, ultimately it’s not good for the quality of the snooker on display either.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
at least 50 of the 128, maybe more could not afford to travel to China, nevermind mainland Europe for a 128 qualifier when you get nothing for losing. the cost of flights to China have rocketed since the pandemic and I doubt the Chinese would pay hotels for 128. no, the answer in this ridiculously skewered prize money tour is to take 32 to venues then players can have a little money left. As for snooker.org, all of you are doing a great job under difficult circumstances.
The right answer for me George would be to go back to a point system that would be less top heavy and fairer, or better to a ELO type rating system. In particular tournaments with similar format should be rewarded the same way, no matter the sponsor, but the ranking/rating a rookie beating a top player should see them go up in the rankings/ratings more significantly than the top player beating the rookie. The players now get 20000 guaranteed, but no more unless they earn more over a year. I’d rather have a system where first round losers get something for their efforts – it takes two to play a match and even if both lay outstanding one will lose – and the money being distributed more fairly across rounds as well.
The flights’ prices is one more reason to group events by geographical areas.
I agree, all your suggestions would be beneficial if implemented. However, implementation hinges on venues that are suitable, affordable, and also free at the time they are needed. The bigger issue, in my book, remains the obscene distribution of prize money, and on both ends. Were they willing to increase prize money from one round to the next by no more than 50 or 60%, the winner’s remuneration would still be substantial, and first round losers wouldn’t be punished for showing up and putting in their best effort. WST should even have an interest in that, as the more those at the bottom of the income pile earn in prize money, the more of the guaranteed 20,000 pounds guaranteed income the WST would get back.
As to snooker.org and presenting the trophy: I have no idea whether or not Årdalen even cares for the honor. Maybe there is an even better idea in that the WST could donate sufficient funds to snooker.org to buy enough bandwidth to handle the web traffic during major tournaments – in recognition of the service snooker.org delivers to snooker. Their server crashes quite regularly, likely due to overload.
I would know… I’m one of them …
You are quite cryptic today. One of them… meaning one made to suffer due to the crashes?
One of the team and yes, we do suffer because of the crashes. Believe me, Hermund Ardalen does everything in his power to keep it up and running. None of us it paid for this. It’s all on voluntary basis. Hermund is one of snooker’s unsung heroes, seriously.
I know. And I quite agree on snooker.org, Årdalen, his small team, and the outstanding work they are doing. Hence my suggestion that the WST do something to make their work just a little easier. It’s probably a smallish investment compared to their scoring system that still doesn’t work to anybody’s satisfaction.
No surprise, snpoooker.org is now the site to check as the WST site is absolutely useless with the scoring system they experiment with.
Andres Petrov made the point that the qualification process means they have to travel twice – once to a qualification event (usually Leicester) and then again to the main event if successful. For an overseas player that cost is magnified – Petrov won 2 matches in the NI Open, but only just broke even, i.e. it’s essentially more cost-effective for him to lose in the qualifiers.
“Final stages”, “A place in the main draw”, “Qualifiers”… are all misleading terms used when talking about some of the first round matches in these events.
“Money saving” or even “Money spinning” are more appropriate.
It almost feels like WST are taking a back door approach to reducing the field to 64.