A total of 128 players has finally been whittled down to the last eight.
The WST Pro Series will crown its inaugural winner on Sunday with eight players vying for the title in the final group in Milton Keynes.
A truly forgettable ranking tournament that has taken three weeks to complete – spread across two long time slots on the calendar – will have its champion by the end of the 21st day’s play.
The competition may have incorporated the best-of-three frames format, but the outcome will have been determined in the aftermath of a marathon race rather than a sprint.
Still, despite the fact that the shorter matches could have thrown up more shocks, the final group of the WST Pro Series boasts a pretty strong cast.
The remaining contenders have already won more than £10,000 for reaching this stage – depending on where they placed in their respective groups from the opening two phases.
Additional prize money will of course be on offer on Sunday with the overall champion set to receive an extra £20,000.
World number one Judd Trump is bidding for a sixth ranking title of this season, which would match the record he set during the 2019/20 campaign.
The Englishman, who won the Gibraltar Open earlier this month, won six out of his seven matches on Saturday to advance from Group 4 ahead of Stuart Bingham.
The pair joins Ali Carter, Mark Williams, Kyren Wilson, Xiao Guodong, Sam Craigie, and Jack Lisowski in the final eight of the competition, which will also be played under the round-robin guise.
Trump will obviously be the online betting favourite, but it’s difficult to discount anyone at this point, and for Lisowski, Xiao, and Craigie it’s an opportunity to land a maiden piece of ranking silverware.
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WST Pro Series Final Group
Ali Carter
Mark Williams
Kyren Wilson
Xiao Guodong
Sam Craigie
Jack Lisowski
Judd Trump
Stuart Bingham
What is the WST Pro Series?
The format for the WST Pro Series is quite similar to that which was utilised for two out of the three editions of the Championship League that were staged during 2020.
There are 16 groups comprising eight players in each, with a round-robin phase determining the top two who will advance to the second group stage.
Eight groups in the first stage already took place in January, while the outcome from the remaining eight groups will be determined over the coming days.
The 32 players who progress to stage two will be split into four more groups of eight, with the top two again moving forward from each to contest the final group.
That remaining set of eight players will subsequently battle it out in the same fashion in the final Pro Series group to become the overall champion.
There is a total tournament prize fund of £420,500, broken down in various ways throughout the three group stages.
The winner, however, stands to collect at least £30,000 in an event that incorporates a sprint best-of-three frames format throughout.
Live coverage will be available via an account with several online bookmakers, as well as around the world through the Matchroom.Live streaming service.
Click here to view the full draw (Times in CET)
