Stephen Hendry believes Chang Bingyu is nailed on to be involved at the prestigious Masters invitational showpiece this season.
The next edition of the World Snooker Tour’s second most important event takes place in January with the top 16 from the world rankings set to participate as usual.
The cut-off point to secure a spot comes after the UK Championship in December, meaning there is not long left to accumulate valuable ranking points.
Chang earned £175,000 worth of ranking points for his tremendous Wuhan Open triumph at the weekend, with the maiden ranking title helping him rise to a career-high number 22 on the official world rankings list.
The 24 year-old, however, has no points to defend on the rolling two-year standings this term, and his provisional ranking for the Masters is already up to number 15.
That means it’s almost guaranteed that Chang will make his Masters debut at the Alexandra Palace in London.
“It’s very easy to sound clever after the fact, but I think we all thought after some of his performances that it’d be a surprise if he didn’t win something,” Hendry said of Chang’s Wuhan win on the Snooker Club podcast.
“We were talking about Jack Lisowski earlier, and Jack says that Chang’s the best player in the world right now.”
“Even when he loses matches, he’s still making two or three centuries. He’s just an absolute machine. Those last eight shots to clear and win were just unbelievable.
“You looked at the table and thought, ‘well he’s not winning it from here.’ Zhao Xintong in the chair is thinking that he’s getting another chance.
“It was just phenomenal. The guy is brilliant – we’ve been raving about him for a while. He has proved that he’s the real deal.
“He has obviously made mistakes in his career. He has had that time out [through suspension]. But he has come back, and nothing intimidates players like heavy scoring. It’s just such a powerful weapon.
“Wu Yize hasn’t managed to find the form of the World Championship yet, but the scoring power of those three guys is just phenomenal. It’s so intimidating.
“Chang is going to be a threat every time he takes the cue out of his case.
“If he’s not a top 16 player by the time of the Masters, I’d be shocked. He’s on a roll now and he’ll have so much confidence from that win.
“He was confident anyway, but I’d be shocked if he wasn’t at the Masters.”
Hendry was also full of praise for Zhao Xintong, who despite losing 10-7 to Chang in the Wuhan final became the world number one in snooker for the first time in his career.
Zhao has barely any points to defend between now and the 2027 World Snooker Championship, meaning it’s probable he’ll enjoy the top-dog status for the next few months to come.
“He’s just a class act, isn’t he? He really is, the way he plays,” the seven-time world champion said.
“He has only been back on the scene for two years, and he’s already the world number one. It’s just phenomenal.”
“Zhao Xintong, in my opinion, is the best player in the world. And it’s going to be fascinating to see the battle for that world number one status.
“But with the points he’s not losing [compared to the others], it’s hard to see him getting knocked off it.”
Chang and Zhao are both back in action this week at the British Open in Cheltenham.
Featured photo credit: WST
>Chang earned £175,000 worth of ranking points for his tremendous Wuhan Open
This seems like a good time to repeat something I said before: if he had won the China Open (as Mark Selby did), he would have gotten 250k ranking points — competitively those events are comparable, aren’t they? — if they are not, how do they differ? — I speculated before that the significant difference in prize money may come down to sponsors, i.e. how much they are willing to pay to fund the prize money pool.
It was someone else who suggested that the WST should change the way players are ranked — a good reason to do this would be to eliminate this kind of apparent inequity — after all, per this article, it could have a decisive effect on whether Chang Bingyu makes the Masters or not.
Yes, the ranking system in its current form is awful really. There’s always plenty of discussion about it, including this week from Judd Trump who has criticised it. WST doesn’t seem interested in changing it, though.