The Players Championship, which will be the 16th ranking event of the snooker season, will swing into action on March 4th. It is a week-long event which will see the final contested on March 10th at the Preston Guild Hall.
This is a small event with just the top sixteen on the Order of Merit taking their places. Ronnie O’Sullivan makes the trip back to Lancashire as the defending champion.
Gearing up for bigger things
We are at that point of the season now where the players will have an eye on bigger things. Namely the World Championship which will start in mid-April. It is a good time now for players to start gathering momentum towards that big prize. There are a handful of big events coming up between now and then, such as the Tour Championship and the China Open, so the ante is being upped.
O’Sullivan searches for form
The last time that Ronnie O’Sullivan landed a title this season was at the UK Championship. That was in early December. At that point, he looked as if he was going to start dominating everything again. But strangely enough, the very reverse of that happened. He lost the Final of the Masters against Judd Trump, crashed out of the World Grand Prix in the first round and bombed the Welsh Open in the third round.
The interesting thing about O’Sullivan is that he is still the one to beat in events. When he’s on his game, that’s a tough thing for anyone to do. He is the reigning Players Championship title holder and he has shown already this season that he can defend a title. Title defences in snooker are no easy thing to pull off. But he did it at the UK Championship earlier this season. That was the first time that he had defended a title successfully since the 2017 Masters. It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of form he is in, he still turns up at tournaments as the favourite. O’Sullivan is at 12/5 odds with top bookmakers.
The trending Trump
It is Judd Trump who is the hot ticket at the moment though. After his win at the Northern Ireland Open, he then had that massive breakthrough at the Masters. Trump earned his first Masters title in taking out O’Sullivan 10-4 in a brilliant fashion. Trump then powered his way to the World Grand Prix title in Cheltenham.
Trump goes as the 7/4 second favourite with leading bookmakers at the Players Championship. He is a man with some form at the Players Championship as well. Trump won the 2017 Players Championship title and he has been to the semi-final in three of the last five editions on top of that. He is in the opposite half of the draw to O’Sullivan for the 2019 edition.
Other Players in contention
Mark Allen is the top seed for the event and he has been to three finals in his last six appearances in ranking events. He won at the International Championship and the Scottish Open, while he was runner up to the UK Championship. His form did dip since his Scottish Open success in December. He could be a quiet threat in the draw because of what he has done this season. He was the 2016 winner of the Players as well.
Neil Robertson has come good on a couple of occasions recently. He showed a lot of fight at the Masters in finishing as a losing semi-finalist. The Australian claimed the Welsh Open title which was his second ranking event of the season. He finished as the losing finalist at the Players Championship in 2012 and 2013 so it has been a tournament which has just been out of his reach.
Then there is Mark Selby’s who is still searching for a big upturn in form. He gets a big scrap against John Higgins in the first round. The winner of that could face Ronnie O’Sullivan in the quarterfinals. With Mark Allen in that top half of the draw as well there are some great-looking matches to look forward to up there.
What to look forward to
Top of the bill really is the potential of a title defence from Ronnie O’Sullivan. It’s hard to gauge sometimes if he is really interested because of his demeanour. But then he cues-up and you are blown away by what he can produce. However, his heavy loss in the final of the Masters to Trump seemed to knock a bit of wind out of him. But then again if there is one player in the world who can brush it off, then it is ‘The Rocket’.
The other big thing to look out for is the form of Trump. He has had some tremendous confidence coursing through him recently. It finally seems as if he is adding a bit of consistency to his brilliantly raw attacking power. He’s landed in the easier half of the draw too and that could aid his challenge of being the last man standing on March 10th. Will we see potential O’Sullivan v Trump final come to life?
