Mitchell Mann overcame a broken down car and being docked a frame to beat Gao Yang 4-3 and reach the last 32 of the Unibet British Open in Cheltenham.
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Mann will be back at the table to face Antoni Kowalski in the third round on Wednesday night, and at least will have a much less stressful journey to the baize. The 33-year-old set out from Birmingham to drive to Cheltenham at 8am this morning, but just 20 minutes later saw a ‘flat tyre’ warning light on his dashboard.
“Within a minute I was on the hard shoulder and had no spare type, I was completely stranded,” said the world number 91. “Luckily my friends Tom and Jack, who are greenkeepers at the golf club where I have my practice table, answered my call and they came to pick me up. One of them drove me to Cheltenham and the other waited with my car for the RAC. I should have driven down last night, it’s a lesson learned. I have no idea where my car is now!“
Arriving ten minutes late, Mann started the match 1-0 down, but battled back for victory, taking a tense deciding frame by clearing from the last red.
Judd Trump recovered from a slow start to beat tour rookie Leone Crowley 4-1. Ireland’s Crowley won the opening frame and had a chance in the second but missed a tricky final yellow. World number one Trump stole the frame to gain a foothold then took the last three with a top break of 100.
Mark Allen made it nine wins in a row as he beat Bulcsu Revesz 4-1 with a top break of 69. Allen won the BetVictor English Open last week and is into the third round here and a tie with Mark Williams at 1pm on Thursday. Shaun Murphy saw off Scott Donaldson 4-1 with a top run of 80 and will meet Neil Robertson in another huge last 32 clash.
Defending champion Mark Selby top scored with 115 in a 4-3 win over Liu Hongyu, while Cheung Ka Wai made an 83 in the decider to beat Matthew Stevens 4-3.
John Higgins took a huge scalp in round three of the Unibet British Open as he beat World Champion Zhao Xintong 4-2 to reach the last 16.
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Four-time Crucible king Higgins admitted that he was “really struggling for motivation” at last month’s Wuhan Open but looks to have regained his hunger this week in Cheltenham. After edging past Mark Davis and Jack Lisowski by 4-3 scorelines, tonight was Higgins’ best performance of the week as breaks of 76, 82 and 55 helped him outplay Zhao. Scotland’s Higgins will now face Ben Mertens or Robbie McGuigan on Thursday evening.
Barry Hawkins recovered deficits of 2-0 and 3-2 to beat Jak Jones 4-3, finishing superbly with an 88 in the decider. “I was cueing terribly at the start of the match and felt jaded,” said Hawkins, who was runner-up in the UK Championship and German Masters last season. “It was a late start for me, usually at 9pm I’m tucked up in bed with a cup of tea and the TV on, then I’m snoring by 10pm!
“It was only in the last frame that I switched on and made a really good break, so I’m delighted to still be in the tournament. I have been consistent for a while. When I get to this stage of tournaments I need to push on and try to win more, rather than relaxing.”
Liam Davies kept the best run of his pro career going with a 4-2 defeat of David Lilley, highlighted by breaks of 123, 59 and 63. The 19-year-old Welshman’s only previous appearance in the last 16 of a ranking event came at the 2023 Shoot Out.
Anthony McGill top scored with 91 in a 4-1 defeat of Oliver Lines. Mitchell Mann, who almost failed to make it to Cheltenham at all as his car broke down on the way to the venue this morning, is into the last 16 of a ranking event for the fifth time in his career after beating Antoni Kowalski 4-2 with a top break of 101. Louis Heathcote stormed to a 4-0 whitewash of Zak Surety, his top run 105.
Two close matches finished past midnight local time and aren’t mentioned in the above report:
Stan Moody beat Ian Burns by 4-2 in a close match. Most frames were hard-fought. The highest break of the match was only a 70 by Burns. Moody came out the winner with a match high break of 66.
Chang Bingyu beat Noppon Saengkham by 4-3. The match too was hardfought, close and rather low scoring.
Ronnie O’Sullivan has pulled out of next week’s Unibet British Open for medical reasons.
O’Sullivan was due to face Sanderson Lam in the opening round on Monday September 22nd at 7pm. He has been replaced in the draw by the highest available player from the 2025 Q School ranking list, Daniel Womersley.
The tournament at Cheltenham Racecourse runs from September 22-28.
Shaun Murphy produced a phenomenal burst of 457 unanswered points to beat Zak Surety 4-0 at the BetVictor English Open in Brentwood.
The Magician was on the cusp of a historic display and total shutout. He fired in three century runs of 125, 135 and 133 in the opening three frames to blitz to the verge of victory. However, two misses in the fourth did allow Surety to get eight points on the board.
Murphy was aiming to join Neil Robertson, who was the only other player to win a best of seven with four centuries and denying his opponent a single point. The Australian achieved that feat in 2013 against Ahmed Saif.
Although Murphy didn’t achieve that feat, it was an emphatic triumph for the Englishman. He recently lost his place in the top 16 of the Johnstone’s Paint World rankings for the first time in 19 years. On this evidence it won’t be long until he’s back, he now faces Fan Zhengyi.
Murphy said: “One of the negatives of me also having a broadcast career is that I am aware of these types of moments or stats. I know that 4-0 with four centuries and without my opponent scoring a point is special.
“It is the performance that you dream of. When you practise for all of those hours you dream of playing like that in front of a crowd like tonight.”
Mark Selby scored a comprehensive 4-1 win over Liam Highfield to get his bid for a third English Open crown underway.
Selby’s victory in 2022 saw him beat Luca Brecel 9-6 in the final. It was a momentous triumph for the Leicester cueman, who was battling mental health struggles away from the table and hadn’t lifted silverware for 19 months on it.
Today’s encounter saw Highfield claim the opening frame, before breaks of 52, 101 and 103 helped Selby to four on the bounce and the win. He now plays Scottish Open champion Lei Peifan.
Selby said: “It was huge to win in 2022. There would have been positives if I’d lost the final, but I’d probably not have seen it that way. When you lose a final it is raw and tough to take. Having won that and turned a corner was a huge asset for me mentally. I think going forward it was important to my snooker career.”
Belgium’s 2023 World Champion Luca Brecel scored a nerve shredding 4-3 win over Iranian number one Hossein Vafaei. Next up for Brecel is Si Jiahui.
Robbie Williams stunned Kyren Wilson 4-2 to book his progression and a meeting with Pang Junxu.
I don’t have much to add as, for once, the matches featuring in the report are those I watched. Kyren Wilson had a bad day in office and Robbie Williams can play. Of course he can … all those who qualified for the main tour can play at a very high level
Neil Robertson hopes player power brings more transparency from snooker chiefs
Neil Robertson hopes increased player power can help provide more transparency on how snooker is funded.
The Professional Snooker Players Association (PSPA) has emerged as an independent players’ union, with four-time world champion John Higgins as its chairman and with a string of big names involved.
It is early days for the new association, but they have outlined a number of issues they want to address with World Snooker Tour (WST) and the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), mainly surrounding player welfare.
There is concern that the PSPA will clash with the established powers that be, including WPBSA Players, the existing players board, of which Robertson is a member.
However, the Australian has dismissed the idea of infighting becoming an issue between the players and welcomes the new association.
‘I don’t see that happening,’ Robertson said of potential clashes. ‘The (WPBSA) Players board is very small. It’s myself and a handful of others.
‘As far as I know, there’s meant to be a meeting between us to see how we can move things forward and do the right things for the players and for the game. Watch this space, I suppose.’
On whether he could be a member of both WPBSA Players and the PSPA, he said: ‘I’m not too sure what I am allowed to do or not allowed to do, but I’m not completely opposed to the idea at all. I think the Players Board is very good for what it does, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I think the players should have more power.’
Robertson was motivated to join WPBSA Players to help resolve a number of issues he sees in the game, one of the most significant being more transparency on revenue streams in the sport.
The former world champion feels players should be made aware of the finances surrounding television and sponsorship deals, so they can better understand the way the sport is funded.
‘The main thing is players want a lot more transparency with what’s going on,’ he said. ‘When there are these massive deals that are happening, the TV deals etc, I think that the players are certainly within their rights to find out how much these deals are actually worth.
‘When Barry Hearn took over, we were just so grateful to be playing the sport again and to be playing in a lot of tournaments. But that doesn’t mean that the players should be blind to all these deals and sponsorship deals that are coming into these events.
‘That’s probably one of the big issues is that the players just want to know, okay, the prize money breakdown is this. How much was actually contributed by the promoter or the sponsor?’
Another major alteration that Robertson wants to see is around scheduling of tournaments as he feels the calendar should be organised with geography more firmly in mind.
Chinese events are not played consecutively on the calendar, chiefly because promoters want them separated in order to stand out and be more prestigious, but Robertson feels other factors are more important.
‘The scheduling, long-term, is something I want fixed,’ he said. ‘I don’t want us bouncing all over the world. There’s jetlag, but not only that, players are having to pay out double or triple the travel expenses that we really need to. That could be condensed.
‘I’m sure we could get a situation where the calendar is better structured in and around the Asian events and then we work our way back to the UK.
There’s no reason to fly to Shanghai and all of a sudden you’ve got a week gap out of nowhere. Then you go into Saudi and then you go back to UK, then you’re going back to China again. Then you’re going back to UK and then you’re going back to China again.
‘It’s too much and there aren’t many sports which put that kind of demand on players. Just because a promoter says that they want it this way, I don’t think is really enough.
‘These kinds of things we’re trying to get done and change. A bit more empathy towards the players and their travels and all these sorts of things.’
The “bold” highlight is my doing because I feel this is very important ant it’s something I have been saying for years. The players health and wellbeing should come first and bouncing back and forth through time zones isn’t contributing positively to them. and Also, if one does not want to have weeks of “qualifiers” one after another, and then months without a thing for some players, it would force WST, WPBSA and China to accept that events are played in one go, from round one with all 128 players involved at or close to the main venue. Just like the current English Open is right now. That is how it should be. And I will add, there should be a “Mainland Europe” group of events as well, with Belgium, Germany and Poland as obvious candidates to host some tournaments. Scandinavia should certainly be considered too.
Luca Brecel’s comeback gathered momentum as he beat Jimmy White 4-1 to reach the last 64 of the BetVictor English Open in Brentwood.
Brecel didn’t compete in the first three ranking events of the season then scored his first win of the campaign with a 4-0 success against Liam Davies in the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open qualifiers. And the 2023 World Champion built on that today with a comfortable win over White, making top breaks of 51, 50 and 95. He will meet Hossein Vafaei in round three on Monday evening.
Marco Fu’s superb form continued as he beat Mark Davis 4-0 with a top break of 110, his eighth win in ten matches so far this season. Iran’s Amir Sarkhosh top scored with 76 in a 4-2 defeat of Long Zehuang, earning a tie with Mark Williams.
Jimmy Robertson beat Wang Yuchen 4-3 on the final black, clearing the colours in the decider. Essex’s Zak Surety also took the decider on the colours to win 4-3, beating Haris Tahir. Liam Highfield came from 3-1 down to beat Oliver Lines 4-3, making 89 and 79 for 3-3 then winning the decider by clearing from yellow to pink. Louis Heathcote top scored with 127 in a 4-3 win over Jordan Brown.
I first watched the Fan Zengyi v Julien Leclercq match … 😞 Julien started well enough, winning the first two frames, but as soon as Fan won the third, I sensed that the “feel” of the match had changed and that Fan would win. Unfortunately1, I was right. This is nothing against Fan, who is a very determined character and never gives up, but it is a concern about Julien who is hugely talented but appears to have lost his confidence, and, maybe, his motivation as well.
Next, I watched the Jimmy Robertson v Wang Yuchen match. This was a very hard fought and good quality match but not a “high scoring” type of match. Wang lost despite making the two highest breaks in the match: 92 and 53. The 53 came in the decider… Jimmy is a very skilled “hard match player” and he proved it again yesterday. All credits to him.
I’m also pleased that Sunny Akani progressed. I certainly have nothing against David Lilley as a person and I know that life hasn’t always been kind to him but I don’t enjoy watching him play. This match was extremely hard fought as you would expect with these two, and featured just one break over 50, a 55 by David in frame 4. Only two frames were “one-sided” scoring-wise, the first and the last, both won by Sunny.
Jimmy White scored his second win of the season as he came from 2-0 down to beat Cheung Ka Wai 4-3 in the first round of the BetVictor English Open, setting up an intriguing clash with Luca Brecel.
The first event in the 2025/26 BetVictor Home Nations Series got underway on Thursday in Brentwood. The non-televised phase runs until Sunday and then the top 32 seeds join the fray from Monday.
After losing the first two frames, veteran White recovered to 2-2 with breaks of 50 and 57. He lost the fifth, but then nicked the sixth on the colours before dominating the decider with a top run of 41. The crowd favourite now meets Brecel in round two on Saturday morning.
Liam Highfield enjoyed a 4-2 victory over On Yee Ng, despite a record break of 137 from Ng in the second frame. Marco Fu, the fastest player on the tour this season with an average shot time of 15 seconds, needed just 59 minutes to beat Gao Yang 4-0 with breaks of 62, 79, 110 and 104. There was more success for Hong Kong as Wang Yuchen came from 3-2 down to edge out Florian Nuessle 4-2.
Pakistan’s Haris Tahir top scored with 127 in a 4-0 win over Michal Szubarczyk while Julien Leclercq beat Aidan Murphy 4-0 with runs of 115, 68, 58 and 104.
The first two matches to finish yesterday were won by two Chinese players, Huang Jiahao and Zhao Hanyang who beat Oliver Sykes and Connor Benzey respectively.
Sunny Akani came back from 0-2 down to beat Oliver Brown, with a top break of 107.
Liam Graham beat Antoni Kowalski by 4-1 in a match that was much closer than the score suggests. The last two frames in particular were hard fought and very close. Liam won them both.
The match between On Yee and Liam Highfield could easily have gone the distance. On Yee lost the last frame on a score of 70-69 to Liam … having made a 69 break in that frame. She also scored the only century of in that match, her 137 in frame 2.
Julien Leclercq missed the 14th red in a maximum attempt in frame 4 of his match against Aidan Murphy. Julien won that match by 4-0 with breaks of 115, 68, 58 and 104.
The UK Championship format is now similar to the World Championship format in its structure and that means that a number of amateurs are invited to compete n the first round.
The WPBSA and World Snooker Tour (WST) have today announced the official qualifying criteria for the 2025 UK Championship which will once again see 16 elite amateur players earn their places through recognised WPBSA pathways.
One of snooker’s longest running events, the UK Championship is part of the Triple Crown Series alongside the World Championship and Masters tournaments. The event will see the world’s top 16 seeded through to the final stages, to be held at the York Barbican from 29 November – 7 December 2025.
The remaining players will compete in the qualifying rounds in Wigan from 22-27 November, with 16 players to emerge and complete the last 32 line-up.
WPBSA Qualifiers
The field for this year’s event will again include up to 16 players to have earned their places through new pathway opportunities for elite performers through activities staged and coordinated by the WPBSA Group.
The qualifying criteria is set out below:
WPBSA Q Tour Europe
The winner from each of this season’s first four WPBSA Q Tour Europe events will automatically qualify, with Hammad Miah having already secured the first place following his recent victory at the season-opening event in Sweden:
Hammad Miah – WPBSA Q Tour Europe 2025/26 – Event 1 winner
TBC – WPBSA Q Tour Europe 2025/26 – Event 2 winner
TBC – WPBSA Q Tour Europe 2025/26 – Event 3 winner
TBC – WPBSA Q Tour Europe 2025/26 – Event 4 winner
WSF Championships
Eligible players from the world’s largest international amateur tournaments:
Krzysztof Czapnik – EBSA Under-16 Championship 2025 – Finalist
Oliver Sykes – EBSA Under-21 Championship 2025 – Finalist
Any players who do not accept their place will be replaced by reserve players from the WPBSA Q Tour Europe Ranking List after Event 4.
I know that this “new” format is not to everyone’s liking, but I do like it. Also the BBC “support” is very important for snooker as a sport, and “elevating” the status of the UK championship is certainly a good strategic move for the sport and for the players if they want the BBC to continue supporting it, which I’m sure they do. The BBC coverage is excellent … but unfortunately not available to me here in Greece, other than by using a vpn. That said, in recent years, some of the older commentators showed a coupable ignorance about the younger players, especially those from outside the UK. That has to be addressed.
As you probably know the Pink Ribbon is a pro–am snooker tournament that was initially held at the South West Snooker Academy, later renamed the Capital Venue in Gloucester, England.
The first edition was held in 2010. The tournament raises funds for breast cancer charities and has the players all wear pink shirts to show their support. It was created by Paul Mount who had lost his beloved sister, Kay Suzanne to the disease. It was played at the SWSA for ten years. I went to it every year from 2011 to 2019, taking pictures, a lot of them must still be around somewhere on Facebook, and of course on this blog from 2015 until 2018. Ronnie won it in 2015, the only year he participated. It was revived last season and is now played at the Landywood Snooker Club.
It all started last Friday with the “Flyer Event“, won by Riley Powell who beat Peter Devlin in the final.
The “Top Half” amateur event was played on Saturday. Actually this was the “top half” of the main event, up to and included the “last 64” round as the professionals were seeded in the last 32 of the “main event”.
Amateurs entering the Pink Ribbon are granted two bites of the cherry if they so wish. Indeed they have the possibility to play in both halves. 117 amateurs entered the amateur events!
The “main event”, the professional round, was played yesterday. Not all pros won their opening match … some amateurs showed how strong they are! Indeed one of them, Craig Steadman reached the final!
But, eventually, it was a professional, Chris Wakelin who won the event, beating Craig Steadman by 5-3.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 