The 2024 Scottish Open Qualifiers – Day 1

Monique Professional snooker, Professional snooker tournament

The 2024 Scottish Open started yesterday. The players ranked outside the top 32 have to win one or two matches to qualify for the main venue. Yesterday was the first day of those “qualifiers”.

All the results are on snooker.org

And here is the report on the day by WST:

Stan Moody won a battle of the teenagers against Iulian Boiko by a 4-2 scoreline as the BetVictor Scottish Open qualifying rounds got underway in Sheffield.

The qualifiers run until Wednesday this week, with winners going through to the final stages in Edinburgh in December.

Moody, age 18, enjoyed a run to the last 16 of the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open in Belfast last week and kept his momentum going with an impressive win over 19-year-old Boiko, compiling breaks of 60 and 63.

Louis Heathcote was a quarter-finalist in Belfast and he beat Joshua Thomond 4-0 with top breaks of 79, 69 and 65. Scotland’s Dean Young took a step towards qualifying for his home tournament as he saw off Daniel Womersley 4-2, but there were defeats for Chris Totten, Jack Borwick and Liam Graham.

Andrew Pagett recovered a 3-0 deficit to beat Dylan Emery 4-3, and Egypt’s Mostafa Dorgham enjoyed an equally good fight-back as he won each of the last four frames on the colours to beat Liam Pullen 4-3. Michael Holt came from 3-0 down to 3-3 only for his opponent Alexander Ursenbacher to win the decider.

RANT ALERT

Not one match that involved a Chinese player is reported on properly and the two Belgian players won their match but that’s been ignored as well. Worse even they mention that there were defeats for Chris Totten and Liam Graham, but the players who won those matches aren’t even named. For the record they were Farakh Ajaib from Pakistan and Jian Jun from China. Clearly WST only cares about UK fans and UK players. It’s NOT WST, It’s UKST … and some guests when they care to remember about them that is.

So here goes…

  • Liu Hongyu (China) beat Reanne Evans by 4-1
  • Lei Peifan (China) beat Haydon Pinhey by 4-3
  • Rory Thor (Malaysia) beat Mitchell Mann by 4-2
  • Antoni Kowalski (Poland) beat Gong Chenzi (China) by 4-2
  • Wang Yuchen (Hong Kong) beat Liam Davies by 4-3
  • Julien Leclercq (Belgium) beat Alfie Burden by 4-2
  • Huang Jiahao (China) beat Artemijs Zizins (Latvia) by 4-2
  • Ben Mertens (Belgium) whitewashed Robbie McGuigan
  • Ishpreet Singh Chadha (India) beat Ahmed Aly Elsayed (USA) by 4-3
  • Mostafa Dorgham (Egypt) beat Liam Pullen by 4-3
  • Alexander Ursenbacher (Switzerland) beat Michael Holt by 4-3
  • Amir Sarkosh (Iran) beat Duane Jones by 4-2

As you can see there are plenty of players from outside the UK on tour, and many of them are plenty good enough, but apparently they are not worth reporting on in the eyes of the governing body. No wonder so many UK people continue to support the idea that the UK–Centric organisation of the sport is OK because “we are the majority and we are the best” (sic someone on social media I won’t name).

END OF RANT (for now)

6 thoughts on “The 2024 Scottish Open Qualifiers – Day 1”

  2. It’s as if whoever was in charge of writing it up didn’t arrive on time. But in fact these tiered matches provide a very interesting narrative, with the progress of young players, international players, and some agonising relegation battles. These are not stories WST tend to favour, although they have got a bit better in some regards. Most likely, attention will be payed to players like Joe Perry, Matthew Stevens and Jimmy White.

    Jiang Jun had an easy win, despite the table appearing to catch fire! They probably should have evacuated the playing area until the smoke was stopped. Jiang is now close to top-50 in my Elo ratings, but he’s still projected for relegation. There are just too many very promising players chasing the 4 one-year top-up places. There will be a large gap in the schedule in the spring (the elite Players’ Series) and then it will come down to the World Championship.

    Two rookies I’ve been following – Gong Chenzhi and Antoni Kowalski – played a bizarre frame which ended 88-82 to the Pole.

    • They should pay attention really. there are 18 players under-21 on tour, on merit, only 4 are British. If they want a future for this sport it’s time to give the non-British players the recognition they deserve AND to have 80% of events out of the UK. Mainland Europe has been largely ignored.

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