Well after a bit of a false start in August,the season gets going again in earnest this weekend with the Northern Ireland Open kicking off in the wonderful Waterfront theatre in Belfast. With this in mind I figured it was high time I revved up the old blog again, but now in the guise of a weekly column covering some of the hot topics in the sport.
The question then was where to start? I decided I might as well go all in with a new proposal designed to solve the problems with our current ranking system.
One of the early changes made during the "Hearn revolution" was to address the problems with the old ranking system.The system, as it was,was stagnant & served only to protect those at the top of the game.The changes made introduced a 2 year rolling ranking system based solely on money earned.This on the face of it seemed much fairer, as players were rewarded on current form, but problems also emerged.Chief among these was the discrepancy in prize money between the world championship and every other event.
For the most obvious example we have to look back at the 2015/16 season.In the May of 2015, Stuart Bingham had sprung one of sports biggest surprises when he beat Shaun Murphy in the final to claim the world title. This undoubtedly is the pinnacle for any snooker player,but it comes with its own baggage. For the following year, you are introduced wherever you go as "The world champion".This can weigh heavy on your shoulders & especially as a first time winner. That was certainly the case with Stuart, as he struggled with the new level of expectation on him & he arrived at the Crucible the following year with just one final appearance & a string of early defeats to his name.Despite this however & because of the enormous level of prizemoney available at the Crucible, he was still only a victory or two there form ending the season as world no.1. Not even Stuart's biggest fans could have suggested at the time that such a ranking was a fair reflection of current form
This again reared its head last month,when by virtue of his most recent world championship victory Mark Selby ascended to the top of the ranking again, much to the disgust of his predecessor Judd Trump. Now this one was slightly different, the last two seasons have seen the calendar chop & change,so prizemoney form the pre covid world can be lost without a like for like chance to stop the damage, but even allowing for that, can anyone really argue that considering the way he has dominated the last two seasons, that Trump isn't the worlds best player?
These are only a couple of examples & the world championship is at the extreme,but when things get back to normal & we have some of those big money tournaments in China again, there is a real danger things get tilted too far towards a certain events.
So whats the answer?
Well for me I've always liked to idea of a more structured points system. So my proposal is we set the events in to four tiers. Now despite with I've said above I do believe that nothing should rival the world championship, so that would be the sole Tier One event, but the rest ,based on prestige would be divided up between the other three tiers.
Tier One -World Championship
Tier Two - eg. UK Championship, International Championship, China Open
Tier Three -eg Home Nations events, British Open
Tier Four -eg. Gibraltar Open, Shoot Out
The points would the be distributed as follows
Tier One Tier Two Tier Three Tier Four
Winner 1500 1000 750 600
Runner Up 1000 750 600 450
Semi Final 750 600 450 300
Last 8 600 450 300 150
Last 16 450 300 150 100
Last 32 300 150 100 50
Last 64 150 100 50 25
Last 128 0 0 0 0
*Two quick notes here,the points for the world championship qualifiers would have to be decided on which qualifying system is in use & places in the Cazoo series would still decided as now on prize money. Which tier each event in this series would hall in to would also have to be decided upon.
The post covid landscape allows the opportunity to redraw the calendar & if its done properly with this system, it allows players a better opportunity to structure their seasons around the events they want to play in,with a view to peaking at the right times. A new calendar may be something I visit again in coming weeks.
One potential drawback with this is where is the incentive for places to put on new events with bigger prize money? This is however where I see a real chance to shake things up,with events not coming up to scratch facing demotion. By this I mean an event must be held to a certain standard regardless of prizemoney om offer ,that is playing conditions, venue ,atmosphere. fans. The incentive is that events that meet these standards can be promoted up a tier. As years go by maybe a 5th tier could be introduced to accommodate more events based on this template.
So there you have it. My proposal to solve the ranking crisis. Please let me know what you think.
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