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Ssb - new season: Can anyone dominate?
No player has won more than two ranking titles in a single season since 2004/05 when Ronnie O’Sullivan captured the Grand Prix, Welsh Open and Irish Masters.
John Higgins had a fine run from the 2009 China Open until last season’s Welsh Open, winning two titles and reaching six successive semi-finals but this hardly counts as domination in the mode of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry at their peaks.
Davis won 12 of the 19 ranking events staged from the 1985 Grand Prix to the same tournament in 1988.
Hendry won five – yes, I did say five – successive ranking titles from the 1990 World Championship to the 1991 Mercantile Classic, part of a run of seven consecutive finals that also included his capture of the Wembley Masters.
So the question is this: will anyone dominate the new season in anything approaching the same way?
And the answer is almost certainly this: no.
The truth is, there are some very, very good players around right now but nobody who is so far in front of the rest that they can claim to be snooker’s dominant force.
Nobody is playing any better than Hendry did at his peak - not on a tournament-to-tournament basis - but there have still been plenty of performances in recent times that have enthralled.
O’Sullivan can still turn it on and play snooker that appears to have fallen from the Gods but at other times in the last couple of years he has shown clear signs of decline.
Players like Shaun Murphy, Mark Selby, Ding Junhui and, of course, our new Crucible king Neil Robertson will be expected to challenge for major honours but on any given day any one of them could beat any of the others.
Throw in Mark Williams, Ali Carter, Mark Allen and Stephen Maguire and you have a set of top players who are all deadly at their best but the game has become so competitive that titles are shared around more than ever.
Pound for pound, Higgins and O’Sullivan have been the two best players of the last three or four years.
Which younger player will step up and supersede them in the next couple of seasons?
Robertson is an obvious candidate because he is a proven winner. The Australian has appeared in five ranking finals and won them all.
He has what it takes to become world no.1. Hendry, Higgins, Williams and O’Sullivan have had that position tied up between them for the last 20 years.
But the days of one player dominating to the extent that Davis and Hendry did appear to be over...for now.
Who is to say someone won’t come along who is head and shoulders above everyone else?
One thing’s for sure: they’ll have to be some player.
More...
John Higgins had a fine run from the 2009 China Open until last season’s Welsh Open, winning two titles and reaching six successive semi-finals but this hardly counts as domination in the mode of Steve Davis and Stephen Hendry at their peaks.
Davis won 12 of the 19 ranking events staged from the 1985 Grand Prix to the same tournament in 1988.
Hendry won five – yes, I did say five – successive ranking titles from the 1990 World Championship to the 1991 Mercantile Classic, part of a run of seven consecutive finals that also included his capture of the Wembley Masters.
So the question is this: will anyone dominate the new season in anything approaching the same way?
And the answer is almost certainly this: no.
The truth is, there are some very, very good players around right now but nobody who is so far in front of the rest that they can claim to be snooker’s dominant force.
Nobody is playing any better than Hendry did at his peak - not on a tournament-to-tournament basis - but there have still been plenty of performances in recent times that have enthralled.
O’Sullivan can still turn it on and play snooker that appears to have fallen from the Gods but at other times in the last couple of years he has shown clear signs of decline.
Players like Shaun Murphy, Mark Selby, Ding Junhui and, of course, our new Crucible king Neil Robertson will be expected to challenge for major honours but on any given day any one of them could beat any of the others.
Throw in Mark Williams, Ali Carter, Mark Allen and Stephen Maguire and you have a set of top players who are all deadly at their best but the game has become so competitive that titles are shared around more than ever.
Pound for pound, Higgins and O’Sullivan have been the two best players of the last three or four years.
Which younger player will step up and supersede them in the next couple of seasons?
Robertson is an obvious candidate because he is a proven winner. The Australian has appeared in five ranking finals and won them all.
He has what it takes to become world no.1. Hendry, Higgins, Williams and O’Sullivan have had that position tied up between them for the last 20 years.
But the days of one player dominating to the extent that Davis and Hendry did appear to be over...for now.
Who is to say someone won’t come along who is head and shoulders above everyone else?
One thing’s for sure: they’ll have to be some player.
More...
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