The heavy hitters begin their pursuit of the £500,000 champion’s cheque by entering the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters draw on Tuesday in Riyadh.
A total of 112 players have already bitten the dust in the lucrative new ranking event at the Green Halls.
There are still 32 contenders vying for glory, with 16 of those coming through the early rounds to join the top 16 seeds in the fifth round.
An embarrassing gaffe from the World Snooker Tour saw the organisation release a statement of clarification on Monday.
How the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters draw was initially presented was deemed to be wrong, with the top 16 seeds initially set to face the wrong opponents in the fifth round.
All was cleared up in time for it to not matter much in the grand scheme of things, but it was an untimely example of poor organisation that the tournament, already controversial enough, could have done without.
Crowd numbers have been desperately poor across the first four days of competition, so it will be interesting to see if that improves with the marquee names now involved.
While there has been excitement among the players considering the huge prize money on offer, it’s fair to say that watching supporters of the game have been less impressed so far.
A grim atmosphere inside the venue does not reflect well on the event’s self-proclaimed status as the calendar’s fourth major.
There is still time for that side of things to improve and the final judgement should be reserved for the event’s conclusion, but it doesn’t look great.
Regardless, the action on the table is set to move up a notch with players like Ronnie O’Sullivan, Judd Trump, and Kyren Wilson joining the fray.
O’Sullivan, who triumphed in the Riyadh Season World Masters of Snooker in March, faces Lei Peifan.
CLICK HERE:
Saudi Masters draw + results
World number one Trump encounters Wu Yize, while world champion and recent Xi’an Grand Prix winner Wilson takes on Liu Hongyu.
Undoubtedly the tie of the round sees Mark Selby entertain Neil Robertson in a battle of the former world champions.
Once again, the matches in round five take place over nine frames.
Monday’s Results (Rd 4)
Rory Thor 0-5 Jimmy Robertson
Ashley Carty 2-5 Liu Hongyu
Anthony Hamilton 3-5 Stuart Bingham
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 5-4 Chris Wakelin
Hossein Vafaei 3-5 Ben Woollaston
Joe O’Connor 2-5 Lei Peifan
Matthew Selt 3-5 Pang Junxu
Graeme Dott 0-5 Si Jiahui
Jack Lisowski 5-2 Martin O’Donnell
Stephen Maguire 4-5 Wu Yize
Gong Chenzhi 1-5 Neil Robertson
Jordan Brown 3-5 David Gilbert
Zhou Yuelong 2-5 Elliot Slessor
Noppon Saengkham 4-5 Yuan Sijun
Xiao Guodong 5-2 Lyu Haotian
Scott Donaldson 5-2 Ryan Day
Tuesday’s Matches (Rd 5)
12pm UTC+1
Judd Trump vs Wu Yize
Jak Jones vs Jack Lisowski
Gary Wilson vs David Gilbert
Mark Selby vs Neil Robertson
Shaun Murphy vs Yuan Sijun
Ali Carter vs Elliot Slessor
Barry Hawkins vs Scott Donaldson
Mark Allen vs Xiao Guodong
6pm UTC+1
Kyren Wilson vs Liu Hongyu
John Higgins vs Jimmy Robertson
Mark Williams vs Thepchaiya Un-Nooh
Ding Junhui vs Stuart Bingham
Ronnie O’Sullivan vs Lei Peifan
Zhang Anda vs Ben Woollaston
Tom Ford vs Si Jiahui
Luca Brecel vs Pang Junxu
Click here to view the full draw, including updated results.
Featured photo credit: WST
Actually David, the draw blunder does make a material difference. The 16 players who won yesterday have had their schedule changed: those that played in the evening yesterday will have to come out in the afternoon today, and vice-versa. This cannot possibly have been the intention, so it wasn’t just a ‘graphical design’ issue.
Obviously it wasn’t intentional. Like I said, it’s an embarrassing mistake. But they did fix it before it really mattered. It would have been a much bigger issue had it only been realised today, for example. Not ideal either way and very poor organisation for such a big tournament.
I’m not watching this event out of principle but my theory on low crowds early on would be that having no top 16 for four days is really odd for a so called major. Tennis Slams have 128 fields but the top players are in action on day 1. This even applies to the PDC World Championship, albeit with only a single top player in action on night one. The triple crown events all have big hitters coming in from the outset. It’s hard to think of major sporting events that would wait until day 5 for their top players to enter the fray.