Of course in this new era of a practically all year round snooker,tournaments come thick and fast and this last week has seen the first two title winners of the 2013/14 season.
Last weekend John Higgins proved that talk of his demise had been greatly exaggerated as,with the aid of a new cue,he beat Neil Robertson 4-1 in the final to lift the Bulgarian Open title in front of a hugely enthusiastic crowd in Sofia and yesterday Joe Perry won the first of the APTC events with an impressive 4-1 win over Mark Selby in the final.
It is though with the first full ranking event that the season gets going and there will be plenty of players looking to get off to the perfect start. This was the first event to use the flat 128 structure for the draw which meant the first round was played in England to whittle the number travelling to the venue down to a mere 64.Among those who failed to negotiate this round and so wont be here this week were Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy.
Also missing will be Ronnie O'Sullivan who had to withdraw from the qualifiers because of a family bereavement and Stephen Maguire who didn't enter.
This still leaves a strong field though and all eyes locally will be on Ding Junhui to see if he can finally get the monkey off his back and win again on home soil.A lot of attention early in the week will also be on nine times womens world champion Reanne Evans who qualified for this event and by the draw should have been playing Neil Robertson only for the dreaded wildcard round to intervene.Hopefully she can get through this and get the match she deserves.Regardless though it really is time to get rid of this annoying feature of the Chinese events.
So who will take home the winner cheque of £80,000? Well time will tell but one thing for sure is you can watch all the action unfold on Eurosport. starting Monday morning at 7.30
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