Martin O’Donnell will compete as a professional again next season after winning Event 6 of the Q Tour on Sunday in Leeds.
The Englishman’s 5-1 victory over Ross Muir in the final ensured that he leapfrogged the Scot into first place on the Q Tour rankings.
The player ranked in first after the conclusion of the amateur circuit’s season gains a two-year pro card to participate on the World Snooker Tour.
O’Donnell was a professional player for a decade until being relegated from the main tour at the end of the last campaign.
But the Englishman won two out of the six Q Tour events to deservedly take top spot in the order of merit.
- CLICK HERE: Martin O’Donnell wins Q Tour event 2
Earlier in the sixth tournament at the Northern Snooker Centre, O’Donnell had beaten the likes of Andrew Higginson, Simon Bedford, and Steven Hallworth in reaching the final.
The 36 year-old immediately made his intentions in the title decider clear with a terrific 142 total clearance in the opening frame against Muir.
The latter could only then manage a single frame to avoid the whitewash, a cruel climax for a player who held the number one spot in the rankings from winning the first tournament right up until the final match in the last event.
“It is really nice,” former Snooker Shoot Out semi-finalist O’Donnell said, as reported on the WPBSA website.
“It has been a lot of hard work since I dropped off the tour and it’s nice that it has paid off so quickly and I have finished at the top of the Q Tour this season.”
“The standard is really high, that surprised me actually. I dropped off and I came to these and there are a lot of good players.
“A lot of good players that I hadn’t seen before and it’s hard. With the best of fives, it’s granite on the Saturday and you can lose at any moment, so you can’t get carried away.
“I took a bit of time out after I dropped off and wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I didn’t want to give up.
“I ended up changing my cue which has given me a new lease of life and I have also got my head down and tried to think a lot more positively and not really worry about consequences – which I did when I was on tour.”
Muir, meanwhile, will get another opportunity to gain the second pro card that’s available from the Q Tour.
The players ranked from second through to 17th will proceed to a straight knockout playoff tournament to determine who lands the potentially lucrative ticket to the pro ranks.
Q Tour Event 6
Results
Quarter-Finals
Ross Muir 4-0 Liam Davies
Billy Castle 4-2 Sydney Wilson
Steven Hallworth 4-1 Eden Sharav
Martin O’Donnell 4-1 Simon Bedford
Semi-Finals
Ross Muir 4-3 Billy Castle
Martin O’Donnell 4-2 Steven Hallworth
Final
Martin O’Donnell 5-1 Ross Muir
Q Tour Rankings
| 1. Martin O’Donnell (WST pro card) |
| 2. Ross Muir (playoff) |
| 3. Daniel Wells (playoff) |
| 4. Billy Castle (playoff) |
| 5. George Pragnell (playoff) |
| 6. Farakh Ajaib (playoff) |
| 7. Rory McLeod (playoff) |
| 8. Liam Davies (playoff) |
| 9. Andrew Higginson (playoff) |
| 10. Harvey Chandler (playoff) |
| 11. Eden Sharav (playoff) |
| 12. Sydney Wilson (playoff) |
| 13. Ashley Carty (playoff) |
| 14. Hamim Hussain (playoff) |
| 15. Steven Hallworth (playoff) |
| 16. Joshua Thomond (playoff) |
| 17. Peter Devlin (playoff) |
Featured photo credit: WPBSA
