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Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby TheRocket

D4P wrote:
TheRocket wrote:No. They are obviously all equal.

But if there's one Tennis tournament which can be compared to the Snooker World Championship its without a doubt the French Open. That was my point. The matches can be a real slugfest, it can be extremely challenging physically and you don't win points by just hitting one or two good shots.


If you don't think the French Open should be considered more important than the other 3 tennis majors, then why do you think the WSC should be considered more important than the other 2 snooker majors?


Because it is what it is I suppose? I can't change the history of the sport.

In Tennis there are four Grand Slams. Those four tournaments are treated equally. In my personal opinion the French Open is the toughest one to win and proves to be the biggest challenge. But its one of 4 slams and treated that way.

But in Snooker there is only the World Championship. It has more prestige than any other tournament. It also has a very unique format unlike the slams who are all Bo5. You aint gonna find anyone who will treat the Masters and UK equal to the World Championship.

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby vodkadiet1

There is only one major in snooker and it isn't The UK or The Masters.

It is fallacy to think a snooker player wouldn't rather win one World Championship than win 3 UK Championships or 3 Masters.

After O'Sullivan's effort against Cahill I am surprised he has the front to turn up to events.

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby Iranu

D4P wrote:The World Snooker Championship is by far the most overrated event in snooker. 17 days is way too long for a single tournament, and the matches themselves are painfully long as well. Most people don't have time in their lives to sit around and watch a single 8 or 10 hour match, much less several of them.

The WSC goes too far in the direction of rewarding patience and attention span, rather than just actual snooker ability. In fact, they should consider renaming it the "World Patience Championship", since that's what the event seems to have been designed to test.

bullocks

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby D4P

I posted this back in May. I'm re-posting it here now because I think it's relevant to the discussion.

Golf and tennis make a point of playing the majors on different courses/surfaces, in an effort to reduce the advantage that some players have over others if (for example) a particular course or surface happens to suit their game. If (for example) all of tennis’s majors were played on a grass surface, grass court specialists would have a big advantage over players who fare better on clay or hard courts.

In snooker, it’s not really possible to vary the table conditions. Every table is more or less the same. But that doesn’t mean that there are no other variables that might give some players an unfair advantage over others. One of the main variables in snooker that the Powers That Be can manipulate is the format of the matches, i.e. the number of frames that must be won to win a match.

This is an important variable because (experience suggests) that some players naturally perform better in shorter matches and some in longer matches. Some players are naturally better able to get off to a fast start, while some other players are naturally better able to concentrate and not lose their patience for long periods of time. I would argue that many of these features are general personality traits, rather than specific snooker skills.

With this mind, I think it’s only fair that snooker would offer a variety of “majors” or “Triple Crown” events that use different formats, so that players whose personalities are naturally better-suited to shorter formats don’t always have the advantage and so that players whose personalities are naturally better-suited to longer formats don’t always have the advantage.

Giving one type of player a consistent advantage over another type of player by only offering a single format would seem to be unfair and not very good management of a sport…


I would add that, for snooker to decide that one major that features one set of conditions is more important than the other majors (with other conditions) clearly gives a subset of players who fare better under those conditions an advantage over players who fare worse under those conditions. In my view, that's unfair and not really defensible.

Just as it wouldn't be fair for tennis to decide that grass-court events are more important the clay-court events, it isn't fair for snooker to decide that long-format events are more important than short-format events. Each type of snooker format favors some players over others (based on personality traits), which is fine as long as the different formats are treated equally. To decide that some formats are more important is to give some players an advantage based on personality, rather than on snooker ability. Where's the sense in that...

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby Iranu

Snooker is by its nature a sport of psychological fortitude, perhaps more so than any other. So it makes sense that the biggest tournament is the one that requires more of this than other tournaments. It’s not a sprint sport so it shouldn’t cater to players who favour the sprint formats. This may be unfair of me but I doubt you’d be making this argument if Ronnie had 7 world titles.

Comparisons to tennis and golf aren’t really applicable because they’re always 18 holes or 3/5 sets (give or take a longer final set). Comparing format to surface doesn’t make a e lot of sense.

Anyway, in tennis for example, the four slams just happen to be considered of roughly equal value, and I would bet good money that players who prefer a certain surface consider the slam(s) on that surface to be ‘most important’ to them. Besides you don’t have to go back too far to see a time when the Australian Open was clearly the black sheep of slams. So the relative prestige of the slams has changed with time.

The same will no doubt happen with snooker, especially if the UK continues in its bastardised form and the Tour Championship sticks around for let’s say a decade or so.

Ultimately, as I’ve said many times, the most important tournaments are the ones that players want to win the most. And the World Championship stands head and shoulders above any other tournament by this metric (the ‘Triple Crown’ was basically invented by the BBC when they stopped broadcasting the Grand Prix anyway. When they had that I remember the four tournaments being referring to as the ‘grand slam’ of snooker :roll: )

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby D4P

Iranu wrote:This may be unfair of me but I doubt you’d be making this argument if Ronnie had 7 world titles.


No, I think it's fair. I had wondered the same thing myself earlier. We'll never know for sure, but I think I would still feel the same way, though I technically wouldn't be "making this argument" because there wouldn't be much need to. If Ronnie had 7 world titles, very few people around here would be trying to argue that Hendry's Triple Crown record was anything other than worse than Ronnie's, though I suppose a few diehards would argue that they were tied...

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby Iranu

D4P wrote:
Iranu wrote:This may be unfair of me but I doubt you’d be making this argument if Ronnie had 7 world titles.


No, I think it's fair. I had wondered the same thing myself earlier. We'll never know for sure, but I think I would still feel the same way, though I technically wouldn't be "making this argument" because there wouldn't be much need to. If Ronnie had 7 world titles, very few people around here would be trying to argue that Hendry's Triple Crown record was anything other than worse than Ronnie's, though I suppose a few diehards would argue that they were tied...

Appreciate the honesty :hatoff:

If they were tied on 7 and Ronnie had more majors, some Hendry fans would no doubt be bringing up the UK format change. And I think it would be legitimate.

Re: Ronnie reflects on one of his proudest moments

Postby SnookerFan

D4P wrote:The World Snooker Championship is by far the most overrated event in snooker. 17 days is way too long for a single tournament, and the matches themselves are painfully long as well. Most people don't have time in their lives to sit around and watch a single 8 or 10 hour match, much less several of them.

The WSC goes too far in the direction of rewarding patience and attention span, rather than just actual snooker ability. In fact, they should consider renaming it the "World Patience Championship", since that's what the event seems to have been designed to test.


What absolute tosh.