By Elliott West
Introduction
What a difference a week in snooker makes especially when the majority of the tournament is being played over the best of five frames. The British Open being held at the Morningside Arena in Leicester has been a snooker minefield for the top 16 players with a long list of casualties and packed suitcases as a result. As we reach the end of the week, only Stephen Maguire and Mark Williams will make it to the quarter-finals stage.
The Reasons behind the Cull
The top 16 have suffered the most in this tournament for multiple reasons and I feel it is important to see exactly why? The most obvious reason is the format, a device that gives either little room to swing a cat let alone a cue. Poor performance is quickly found in this format and the margin of error is microscopic. The pressure is definitely piled more so on the higher ranking player and this makes him more prone to make elementary mistakes. Like any pendulum, it can only swing in one direction for so long before it moves in the opposite direction and this is where the top 16 get found out and suffer.
It also doesn’t help that there has only been one tournament since one taking place. The Championship League left us with very clues of how players might fare in the British Open. Those that did well such as Mark Allen have already tripped up and only its victor, David Gilbert remains rooted in the competition. An amazing achievement if he could win back to back tournaments from his first professional win.
Perhaps the playing conditions have caught a few players out too. You would have thought that a regular tournament snooker player, would be able to handle the lightning-fast modern tables but this week has made it clear that form and misjudged shot choices, have clearly impeded their game and produce a performance, that is clearly a shadow of their former self.
Unfortunately, it is now too late for them to shine again and they will have to cast their minds forward to the next tournament. Those that have survived, Williams and Maguire, will have to play out of their skins to survive and make the final. Both players have already had their scares and resulted in Mark Williams having to extra practice time, working with the black.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we lost both of these players and instead have two new faces in the final. Players like David Gilbert, Elliot Slessor and Gary Wilson with Jimmy Robertson and Ricky Walden breathing down their necks. Don’t discount the Chinese players, Lu Ning and Zhou Yuelong as well.
The two players that make the final come Sunday, will deserve their places and have survived the deadly crossfire that this tournament has thrown at them. The prize, a title that few on the current tour have attained and one that hasn’t been available to win for 17 years. The winner will go home with a potentially life-changing £100,000 and the runner-up £45,000, a tournament that holds a prize fund of £470,000 and has already produced two 147 breaks from the now dispatched Ali Carter and John Higgins.
