It’s been an eventful season so far and now that we’re coming up to the first Triple Crown, let’s recap the highlights of this year’s campaign. Despite what it may seem, other things have happened besides Judd Trump winning everything.
Yan Bingtao captured his first ranking title by winning the Riga Masters back in July. The Riga Masters also missed many of its competitors due to flight complications; players included Kyren Wilson and defending champion, Neil Robertson.
Trump began the season following his WSC win and rise to No. 1 strongly by taking the first of his 3 ranking titles (so far) at Daqing, China for the International Championship. He did get eliminated fairly early in following tournaments but went into a flurry of finals week after week; from the World Open to the Champion of Champions to the NI Open, continuing his great run. He lost out in the CoC final to Robertson but has already established himself as the leading century maker with 45 so far. This is almost double the amount of 2nd place. This is also without mentioning how he is storming away with the world rankings, securing his position at the top for quite some time, regardless of how things continue.
Shaun Murphy is another standout player this season, making 3 consecutive finals, unfortunately losing out to Trump and O’Sullivan at the International and Shanghai respectively, but secured his first ranking win since 2017 in a close fought match against Mark Williams.
The first Home Nation event saw Mark Selby break his drought and win his first ranking title for over a year with victory at Crawley for the English Open. He’s also been in 3 semi-finals this season so far, a significant improvement over previous years. He also has just made a bit of history which he is fully embracing online where he spent 6 minutes 13 seconds taking a single shot. Peter Ebdon can now relax.
Now, let’s summarise the non-rankings. Ronnie O’Sullivan triumphed in his first tournament of the season with a 3rd successive win at Shanghai; but has been unsuccessful in his ventures since then until he reached the NI Open final. He has also taken a much more exhibition style approach to his matches, where his shot selection has been quite questionable.
Robertson got his first win of the season with an absolute classic against Trump in Coventry for the CoC – if you haven’t read the breakdown of this match click here to do that – it was match of the season. Barry Hawkins and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh have also been successful at the Paul Hunter Classic and Haining Open, respectively.
And who can forget Jimmy White winning big at the World Seniors Championship, qualifying him for the Champion of Champions. Another memorable moment in this tournament was the participation of Reanne Evans who put up a very respectable performance against Shaun Murphy, coming close to proceeding to Round 2.
Lastly, there have been three 147’s made this season so far; two have been claimed by Tom Ford and the other by Stuart Bingham during the recent NI Open. So, if somehow 20 maximums get made this season, Ford will be getting at least £100k for his contributions. Ford now has 5 competitive maximums to his name.
There is still an enormous amount of snooker left this season, most notably the Triple Crown and Coral Cup series. Can Trump hold all Triple Crowns in the 2019 year with a win at York; or can O’Sullivan turn it on to defend his title? Will Trump allow anyone to share the trophies this season? What things are you looking forward to happening this season?