THE inaugural Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters begins later this week with a total prize fund of £2million making it the second most lucrative ranking event on the calendar after the World Championship.
The world’s top 16, including Antrim’s Mark Allen – who lost his place at the top of the world rankings to Judd Trump after last week’s Xi’an Grand Prix – will join the action when round five begins next Tuesday, but Jordan Brown, Aaron Hill, Ken Doherty and Robbie McGuigan are all involved over the first three days.
Rookie McGuigan is first up in round one, which features the tour’s lowest-ranked players plus 17 wildcards nominated by the Saudi Billiard and Snooker Federation. The 20-year-old from Antrim faces one of those, Abdulraouf Saigh from the host nation, on Friday (12pm), with the winner facing Ma Hailong of China the following day.
Doherty will take on Liam Davies later on Friday (7.30pm), with Marco Fu awaiting the winner on Saturday.
Cork man Hill, ranked number 62 in the world, enters the fray in round two on Saturday, where he faces the winner of Friday’s match between England’s Allan Taylor of England and wildcard Adeel Aqdus of Pakistan.
Brown, ranked 46, plays his first match on Sunday (6pm) with his opponent coming from a trio of Bulcsu Revesz, Julian Boiko or Mark Davis.
Allen’s aim next week will be to better Trump’s performance and take back that number-one ranking. The Antrim man did win three matches in Xi’an but lost 5-3 to Barry Hawkins in the last 16 and then watched the two players directly below him in the rankings contest the final.
World number two Trump lost that 10-8 to world champion and world number three Kyren Wilson, but the man from Bristol had already done enough to leapfrog Allen. It could hardly be tighter, though, with the pair level on £974,000 each but Trump claiming top spot on the ‘countback’ rule, which gives the advantage to the player who went furthest in the most recent event.
Third-placed Wilson’s £179,000 lift has narrowed the gap on both men above him to just £25,500 so he could find himself at the top of the list sooner rather than later.
Brown and Hill both won a match last week to pocket £7,350 each and sit tied for 45th on the one-year list, with their start-of-season rankings unchanged. Brown beat Liam Pullen 5-2 before losing 5-2 to David Gilbert, while Hill accounted for Chris Totten 5-2 but was then whitewashed by Mark Selby.
McGuigan was narrowly beaten 5-4 by World Championship runner-up Jak Jones in qualifying for Xi’an but he did pocket £5,000 in prize money from the opening event of the season, the BetVictor Championship League and is currently tied for 73rd on the one-year list.
