There are two tournaments left in the snooker season and the first of those begins at the Celtic Manor Resort on Monday when the leading eight players in the money list for this campaign do battle in the Cazoo Tour Championship.
This is just the third time that this tournament has taken place. Stephen Maguire won it last year but he has not qualified to defend the title so we are guaranteed a different winner. All eyes will be on Judd Trump to see if he can land another crown.
Recent Winners
2020 – Stephen Maguire
2019 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
The Format
One of the more appealing things about this tournament is that with only eight players taking part we have the whole event on one table with one match on each of the seven days of the competition. The other really inviting thing about this event is that from the quarter finals right the way through to the final every match in the competition is the best of 19 frames. The champion will be decided in the final on Sunday. The players slot into the draw in the position they sit in the money list for this season.
Top Four Seeds
Judd Trump has been the dominant figure on the scene this season and he is a landslide ahead of anyone else in the money list which highlights his dominance. He will be going in search of another ranking title to extend his lead in the rankings and set him up nicely for the World Championship. The winner of the English Open, Northern Ireland Open, World Grand Prix, German Masters and the Gibraltar Open very much arrives here as the man to beat. That is reflected in the market where he is a 9/4 favourite.
Mark Selby has been the second best player this season in terms of the money rankings. He started out the campaign in fine form winning the season opening European Masters and he followed that up with another title halfway through the campaign, adding the Scottish Open crown to his list of titles for the season. His form has dipped somewhat since the turn of the year though with him only going past the last eight of an event once, which was the Shootout which is never the truest guide to form.
Neil Robertson lifted another Triple Crown event when he won the UK Championship just prior to Christmas and he will be out to add another big title to his collection as the number three seed here. He was also beaten in the final of the English Open and the Champion of Champions prior to that but that all came in the first half of the campaign and since winning the UK title his form has dropped off a cliff with first round defeats in three of the four tournaments he has played since. You sense he could be coming here a little underdone.
John Higgins propelled himself into this tournament as the fourth seed when he absolutely cut the field apart to win the Players Championship, the previous event in the Cazoo Series. That came not too far off the back of a run to the final of The Masters so Higgins arrives here in excellent form but being the fourth seed might not be the best place to be in the draw with Judd Trump a possible semi-final opponent. Higgins’ record in the longer format matches in the last few years though shows he should be dismissed at your peril.
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Lower Four Seeds
The world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan is yet to win a title this season but he would love to go into his title defence at Sheffield having won this for the second time in three years. He didn’t actually qualify for the event last year so he is unbeaten in this tournament and it was here where he made his 1,000th century so the competition might carry a little more importance to him. Although he hasn’t won a title this term he has made the final of four events, including the Welsh Open and Players Championship over the last month, so he is very much a live runner here.
Jack Lisowski hasn’t won a tournament this year but he is going mighty close. He has made three ranking event finals this season including the opening Cazoo Series event the World Grand Prix. That was prior to Christmas and since then he has been in the title showdown of the German Masters and the Gibraltar Open. He is playing good snooker and would love to head to Sheffield off the back of his first ranking event title. He could be a dark horse this week.
Kyren Wilson lost to Ronnie O’Sullivan in the World Championship final last year and he has followed that up with a decent enough campaign. He kicked it off by winning the Championship League and while he hasn’t been to another final since then, he was a semi-finalist in the Players Championship recently. He is starting to form a reputation for being better in the longer matches and the bigger tournaments and this would certainly come into that category. He’s in the right side of the draw and shouldn’t be discounted.
Barry Hawkins is the last man into the field. He is the only player who hasn’t made a final of any sorts this season but the events he has gone deep in have been the right ones. Since the turn of the year he has been a semi-finalist in the German Masters and the Players Championship and he has a whole bunch of last 16 finishes on his season resume. His World Championship record would suggest he is better in the longer matches and he probably arrives here fresher than most. He is the outsider of the eight but possibly not a no hoper.
Betting
I thought coming in here that Neil Robertson was the plum draw for one of the lower seeds given his inactivity and his lack of winning matches in 2021. That isn’t to say that he won’t deliver a strong performance but when you have got eight players of the class of these eight we need to look for any chink in the armour somewhere. Robertson’s only win in 2021 was in the Players Championship against a Lu Ning who was grossly out of his depth. The Australian was then thrashed in the next round.
Jack Lisowski is the man who has that draw and if he can take advantage of that there could be a place in the final for him here. The winner of his quarter final plays the winner of Mark Selby, whose form has also toppled backwards, or Kyren Wilson, who while quality wouldn’t hold any fears for Lisowski. When you have John Higgins, Judd Trump and Ronnie O’Sullivan in one half of the draw and a couple of out of form seeds in the other it makes sense to go in the other half. Lisowski at 22/1 looks the pick of that section.
Tips
Back J.Lisowski to win Tour Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 23.00 with Betway (1/3 1-2)
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