Yesterday was the first day of the 2024 English Open. Here is the report by WST:
BETVICTOR ENGLISH OPEN – THURSDAY ROUND-UP
In the first ever match between two women players at a ranking event venue, Mink Nutcharut scored a 4-2 victory over Reanne Evans as the BetVictor English Open got underway in Brentwood.
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The tournament runs until Sunday September 22nd, with the top 32 seeds joining the action on Monday. From 2-1 down against Evans, Thailand’s Nutcharut took three consecutive frames to earn a second round meeting with Ricky Walden on Monday morning.
Basildon’s Zak Surety, who lives just 15 minutes from the venue, top scored with 77 as he beat Farakh Ajaib 4-2. Oliver Lines made a 63 in the decider to beat Rory Thor 4-3, while Liam Pullen fired runs of 52, 85 and 60 in a 4-0 defeat of Antoni Kowalski. Latvia’s promising Artemijs Zizins saw off Duane Jones 4-2.
Michael Holt came from 3-2 down to edge out Gong Chenzhi 4-3, making a 31 clearance to snatch frame six on the black, then a 74 clearance from 54-0 down in the decider.
Once again a lot of matches are “ignored” in this report, most notably ALL those won by Asian players other than Mink. There were wins for Jiang Jun, Lei Peifan, Wang Yuchen and Ishpreet Singh Chadah. Also bizarrely missing from this report is Bulcsú Révész win over “Quid”. Long Zehuang got a walk-over as his opponent Lim Kok Leong failef to show up (again).
Both Belgian boys, Ben Mertens and Julien Leclercq lost their opening match, and were well beaten. That is a disappointment for me, but more than a disappointment it’s a worry. They chose to travel to every event, which worked fine over the last two seasons, but that trip, involving going through the Channel Tunnel, if they travel by car, or even with the Eurostar, can be extremely tiring and stressful. Disruptions are frequent this time of the year because very heavy traffic.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
While happy about Mink winning her match, it was frankly terrible. I don’t see any improvement. And Bai Yulu didn’t win a single frame. I was very happy that women were given tour cards, but this is truly disheartening. Comforted myself with Bulcsú’s match, not that it was much fun either. Lucky about this truly hapless opponent, the only good thing was as he improved throughout the match and finished with two 50+ breaks.
Yea, but on some days Bai scores aound the century mark as well. But then again well below 50. Of course she does need wins, I’m just thinking at the moment she can score more heavily than the other women.
Don’t expect too much from Bai Yulu this season. She hasn’t even played well in the WWS events she won. After years living and practicing in Dongguan, she’s completely changed her life, become a World Champion, taken on a lot of expectation. Fortunately she has time, and at some point can relax and start to show some of her ability.
Yes, but other women are not her competition or measure. Pushing balls around on the women’s tour is one thing, but she is older than tour rookies like Bulcsú or Stan Moody. Still they show a lot more developed game (they played the kind of game women do, a few years ago) and I would really like to know why women cannot step further.
That’s one of the reasons why I don’t like the 128-player model. I’d prefer the players on the margins to play in some events, but not all events. It doesn’t help just to get into a downward spiral, week after week.