The dramatic turnaround from hero to zero continued for Luca Brecel on Monday after being dumped out of the 2024 UK Championship in round one.
The Belgian Bullet squandered a 5-3 lead to Jak Jones in York, losing the concluding three frames to this year’s World Championship runner-up.
It was at the World Championship 18 months ago where Brecel himself fulfilled a decade-long potential of becoming a Crucible champion.
Still just 28 at the time, the future looked so bright as he romped to a swashbuckling success in Sheffield – beating the likes of Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby en route.
In between those victories, Brecel additionally staged one of the all-time great Crucible fight backs in his semi-final battle with Si Jiahui where he spectacularly overturned a nine-frame deficit.
At the time, it seemed as though he could do no wrong and his relaxed off-table lifestyle endeared him to many fans of the game – both old and new.
Brecel was being heralded as the new poster boy of the game, and he was even a few positive results shy of becoming the world number one.
Fast forward to the present day and things couldn’t be much more different.
Luca Brecel was the seventh seed at the Barbican Centre, but he has rarely performed like a top 16 competitor since those exploits at the Crucible in 2023.
Indeed, his position remains elevated only on the back of the £500,000 winner’s prize that he earned from that Triple Crown glory.
Early exits from ranking events have become commonplace since the beginning of last season, with just one quarter-final appearance to boast about from that spell.
The outcome is an unpretty picture being painted on the ranking list as Brecel not only struggles for form, but for his own survival on the World Snooker Tour as well.
With the official world rankings reflected through a rolling two-year list, the former UK Championship runner-up won’t be able to rely on that World Championship pot of gold for long.
In fact, when the half-million-pound sum is deducted and his provisional end-of-season tally is taken into account, Brecel ranks at a lowly 61 in the standings.
That is just three spots higher than the top 64 cut-off point that guarantees tour survival for the upcoming campaign.
First-time world champions have often struggled in the immediate aftermath of their Crucible crowning, but rarely if ever has the demise been to this extent.
He has a £10,300 buffer to the player in 65th place on the provisional end-of-season rankings – Hong Kong’s Marco Fu.
Yet that will evaporate quickly if Brecel can’t reverse this dreadful streak of form that he is enduring at the moment, with only five victories to his name in ranking events this term.
Among those wins, he hasn’t beaten a single player ranked inside the world’s top 50.
There are still several events left on the 2024/25 calendar for Brecel to turn things around, but time is definitely not on his side and he hasn’t entered the upcoming Snooker Shoot Out in Leicester.
That leaves the Scottish Open as his biggest opportunity in 2024 to earn ranking points, an event he managed to win back in 2021 when prospects for his snooker career seemed much brighter.
Beyond that and into 2025, there should be chances at the German Masters, the Welsh Open, and the World Open.
Brecel supporters will be hoping that he can reach the business end in one of those events, because the deeper into the season he gets without safety assured, the more the pressure on his shoulders will intensify.
Should he reach the 2025 World Championship with his ranking still hovering around the top 64 mark, there will be seismic attention on the story.
Questions have been asked, by fans and pundits alike, whether or not Brecel has been applying himself properly to the sport.
At the Northern Ireland Open in October, he flew into Belfast from Mallorca on the day of his matches, and he is actively pursuing a new goal to compete in Ironman triathlon racing.
A player of his talent should be nowhere near the fight for tour survival, but he only has himself to blame for being in this position – putting other interests before those of the green baize.
“As a snooker player, I cannot buy into what he’s doing,” Stephen Hendry said in an interview on a special edition of the UK Championship for Reach.
“For me, as someone who dedicated their whole life to win, I don’t understand it. But it’s his life. Luca’s different to anyone else on the tour in that respect.”
Such is his pedigree, the smart money would still be on him turning things around.
Even if he doesn’t, he could possibly be offered an invitational tour card back to the pro circuit as a former world champion.
That, though, would be as emphatic and embarrassing a downfall as they come in sport.
2024 UK Championship draw and schedule
Round 1 (bo11)
Ronnie O’Sullivan 4-6 Barry Hawkins
Xiao Guodong 4-6 David Gilbert
Shaun Murphy 6-5 Zhao Xintong
Ding Junhui 6-5 Robert Milkins
Mark Selby 4-6 Jack Lisowski
Ali Carter 6-4 Ryan Day
Si Jiahui 4-6 Wu Yize
Mark Allen 6-4 Jackson Page
Judd Trump 6-3 Neil Robertson
John Higgins 6-0 He Guoqiang
Zhang Anda 6-3 Lei Peifan
Mark Williams 5-6 Stuart Bingham
Luca Brecel 5-6 Jak Jones
Gary Wilson 1-6 Michael Holt
Chris Wakelin 6-4 Matthew Selt
Kyren Wilson 6-0 Stephen Maguire
Round 2 (bo11)
Barry Hawkins 6-5 David Gilbert
Shaun Murphy 6-5 Ding Junhui
Jack Lisowski 6-4 Ali Carter
Wu Yize 4-6 Mark Allen
Judd Trump 6-5 John Higgins
Zhang Anda 6-5 Stuart Bingham
Jak Jones 5-6 Michael Holt
Chris Wakelin 2-6 Kyren Wilson
Quarter-Finals (bo11)
Barry Hawkins 6-2 Shaun Murphy
Jack Lisowski 3-6 Mark Allen
Judd Trump 6-2 Zhang Anda
Michael Holt 3-6 Kyren Wilson
Semi-Finals (bo11)
Barry Hawkins 6-5 Mark Allen
Judd Trump 6-2 Kyren Wilson
Final (bo19)
Barry Hawkins 8-10 Judd Trump
Featured photo credit: WST
Why offer an invitational tour card to a player who clearly isn’t committed or dedicated to his profession/job. He has made it clear over last 18 months that he is not bothered to respect the game which has rewarded him so much. Why would that change next season…… Give the tour card to someone who is deserving and wants to give the respect to the game and the fans that it deserves
How bad has the standard been in a few matches since Sunday? Stephen Maguire managed only a 57% pot success rate from a large sample of attempted pots. Wilson only improved at 4-0. Jak Jones/Luca Brecel improved latterly but the first six frames were error strewn.
While Robertson and Trump have taken nearly two and half hours to complete the opening four frames.
“mission accomplished” winners mentality perhaps. A different “winner mentality” to the hoover style of Stephen Hendry: a perennial winner by anyone’s standards. Brecel might simply feel ‘mountain climbed, why re-climb it again?’ why repeat? If he isn’t hungry for it at the moment, maybe he never will, or maybe he will ‘get the munchies’ again in the future. To me, he looks like he’s “over it” to borrow a term from teenagers.