The 2024 World Grand Prix started yesterday featuring only the to 32 on the one year list.
Here is WST report on what happened yesterday evening
Mark Selby admits he was fortunate to survive a first round battle with Yuan Sijun at the Spreadex World Grand Prix, but the local favourite came through 4-3 to reach the last 16.
This event at the Morningside Arena in Leicester brings together the top 32 players from this season’s ranking list, in the first tournament of the 2024 Players Series….
Selby, looking for his first title since the WST Classic at the same venue ten months ago, built a 3-1 lead with top breaks of 85 and 68 but missed chances in the next two frames as China’s Yuan fought back to 3-3. The decider lasted 41 minutes and came down to the colours, Yuan eventually missing a difficult long green, handing Selby the opportunity to pot green, brown and blue for victory.
“I fell over the line,” said Selby, who now meets Wu Yize or Masters finalist Ali Carter. “I played ok to go 3-1 ahead but then blew a good chance to win 4-2. I didn’t deserve to win in the end, I was lucky. Yuan is a good player and when you don’t kill the match off, the game will come back and bite you. He was potting long balls and little nudges were going wrong for me, but that was my own fault for not finishing the match earlier.”
Judd Trump also had a tough opening draw but came from 2-0 down to beat Jamie Jones 4-2. Bristol’s Trump is looking for his fourth ranking title of the season, having won three in a row in October.
World number 40 Jones made a strong start as a break of 103 gave him the opening frame, then the Welshman got the better of a scrappy second. But Jones scored just 11 points in the remainder of the match as Trump took four frames in a row with top runs of 80, 81, 45 and 77.
“Jamie started well although I didn’t do much wrong in the first two frames,” said world number two Trump. “I got into my rhythm from 2-0. I have a lot of experience in these best-of-seven matches and I know I don’t have to panic even at 2-0 down because once I get the momentum I can win three or four frames quickly.”
Last week, Trump suffered the disappointment of a 6-5 defeat against Carter in the quarter-finals of the Masters, when he was defending the title. “It wasn’t too hard to take because I had won a lot of close matches in the Masters and you can’t keep getting out of jail,” admitted the 34-year-old. “I gave it everything and I wasn’t quite good enough, you can’t be too hard on yourself.
“I’m not one for setting targets and I have won three events already this season so any more would be a bonus. My only goal is to get my form back to where it was in October because I have gone off the boil a bit since then.”
Trump now meets China’s Lyu Haotian, who survived a Chris Wakelin fight-back to come through 4-3. Wuhan Open semi-finalist Lyu took a 3-0 lead with top breaks of 69 and 53, before Wakelin battled back to 3-3. A run of 68 gave Lyu the decider.
Hossein Vafaei scored a 4-3 win over Matthew Selt with a top break of 134.
The truth is that both players were struggling at the start of the Trump v Jones match, but Jamie eventually got the better of Judd in both occasions. In the third frame, Judd had the opportunity to find some fluency, got going and dominated from there.
I didn’t watch any of the later matches. I’m not a night owl and those matches eventually finished at past 2 am in my time zone. I can’t handle that. I’m unlikely to watch Ronnie’s match tonight for the same reason.
Speaking of Ronnie, there were a lot of speculations on social media yesterday after he said the the will take a two months break after this week. Fans were discussing what he will miss and what he will play in. Actually, nobody knows for sure, not even Ronnie probably. I doubt that he actually looked at the calendar before sayaing what he said.
Here is what I think will happen and it’s no more than my own “guess work”, so don’t read anything more in it.
The next thing for Ronnie is the 2024 World Open qualifiers. He won’t like the idea to have to qualify and I would be surprised if he plays. The only motivation he would have would come from his sponsors really insisting and/or if there is enough financial incentive. It’s a shame. Ronnie loves playing in China and the Chinese fans love him. The rules are what they are, and the Chinese top players deserve to play in front of their own, but Ronnie is the World number one, and the biggest “box office” player in the game, probably second only to Ding in China. Commercially, not holding his match over is a nonsense. I’ll say it once again: in my opinion there should be no qualifiers for any flat draw event.
I think that Ronnie will definitely give the German Masters a miss, I would be really surprised if he went to Berlin.
Next up for Ronnie would possibly be the 2024 Welsh Open. That’s nearly a month from now, and this year it is staged in Llandudno, one of the rare venues Ronnie really likes. He has “running mates” there as well. Also, it’s one of the Eurosport tournaments. IMO, there is a strong possibility that he plays in this one, albeit maybe without real ambitions regarding the title.
Then comes the 2024 Players Championship. Ronnie this week said that the reason he plays in the World Grand Prix is because it’s only 32 players. Well then … the Players Championship is only 16 players, and it guarantees ranking points even for first round losers. I would be surprised if he misses that one.
And finally … thanks to Kalacs who found this one ❤️
No Filter – Ronnie O’Sullivan v Ali Carter (2024 Masters) from RKRKRKRK on Vimeo.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Dear Monique,
What can I say, I attended The Masters final on Sunday and it was a dream come true, watching Ronnie win a Triple Crown live. The atmosphere was absolutely electric and unbelievable. Even more so because Ronnie gave us all a heart attack with playing ‘kamikaze’ shots and ending the afternoon sessions by trailing 3-5 to Carter.
To see him come back and the crowd cheering him on more and more was amazing. To top it off with a win was absolutely sublime!
The thing is, I have a complaint to make about Alexandra Palace and the way The Masters are organized and I would actually like to address this to the WST, but I am not really sure how/where to do this, so I was wondering whether you could help me?
So, The Masters is, besides the World Championship, THE most prestigious event and almost every year your hear the commentators on both BBC and Eurosport saying the same thing: ‘It’s a wonderful venue’ and all variation on that. Likewise for snooker players.
I pay 145 pounds for a standard ticket for the whole day of the final and if you’d have premium tickets, this even goes up to 215 pounds.
Why on earth is it then possible that the toilet capacity is so limited and frankly unhygienic?
I can only speak for the mens but what I also see is that the womens toilet capacity is just below what it should be. At the start of the mid-session intervals, more than 1000 people rush out of the arena to the toilets and if you’re a women sitting somewhere high, on row K let’s say, forget to be able to go the toilet and back to the arena in 15 minutes time. So if you really can’t hold it any longer you’re screwed and have to sit out at least a frame. Quite unacceptable really if you think of the amount of money you paid for your precious ticket.
As for the mens, there are only a few metal urinals spread over two ‘subrooms’ within the toilet room. Which gives capacity for roughly 15-20 persons. But the space is very narrow and you’re close to each other so it is utterly disgusting as someone else’s urine can easily splash on you. The floor is wet everywhere and you don’t know whether it’s urine or just water.
Not to mention that washing your hands properly is not really an option because the amount of water that comes out of the faucet is really low plus sometimes the paper is empty and you can’t even dry your hands.
Next to the urinals, there are two, ONLY TWO, seating toilets for let’s say roughly 1000 MEN so it goes without saying that this is too low and again, if you’re sitting high up in the arena, it takes you like 5 mins to get out and make it to the toilets and then +20 people are in front of you for the seating toilets, so no chance to make it back in time.
Honestly in my opinion this is just the inability to properly organise an event of this scale. WST knows it a year in advance that the arena is packed with 2000 people on every sessions, so they could for surely forsee additional toilets. There is more than space enough in and around Alexandra palace to set this up so I don’t see why they don’t change this abysmal toilet situation.
I really expected more from ‘the most prestigious event’ and if it is already horrible here then I surely agree with Ronnie that other places might smell like urine and are even worse.
I would love to see this change.
I don’t disagree with your logic about which events Ronnie will play in or miss, but I would point out that you only really have him missing less than a month (i.e., between the end of the World Grand Prix and the beginning of the Welsh Open)…
Yes, I know that. But I also know Ronnie quite well and how quickly his mood can change. When he “retired” from the game in 2012/13, he came to Belgium around November for an exhibition with Hendry. He was 100% determined that this was it. In January 2013 he showed his face at the Masters. He was missing the game. He was missing the people. A few weeks later he announced his comeback. I may be wrong of course, just shared how I see it.
It also not something to take to the bank that he said 2 months. He was probably really exhausted in need of some rest and said something without actually checking what he’d miss. We’ll see.
Ronnie has clarified that he plans to skip Germany and Wales (and presumably the Championship League), and play in everything else
Thanks Mark. More or less what I expected.
Actually not found it was aired yesterday evening on Brirish Eurosport2 and recorded the stream. 🙂
I think this will be on Eurosport1 Europe from 19.45 CET this evening. 🙂
Thanks all the same! 🙂