The 2021 Snooker England Open qualifiers are in full swing, the competition is played in York Barnsley, which is the first large-scale ranking tournament of the new season to gather the top 16 players, and the remaining 48 matches will be played first during the qualification period, and the qualification tournament for the top 16 players including O'Sullivan, Ding Junhui, Selby and others will be postponed to the main tournament. At present, the Chinese legion has Xiao Guodong, Wu Yize, Cao Yupeng, Chang Bingyu, Xu Si and others successfully qualified, but Zhou Yuelong and Zhang Jiankang were unfortunately forced to retire.
The England Open was founded in 2016, and that's the year world snooker launched the concept of "Home Station", and so far, the English Open has been the starting event of the local series for five consecutive years, with a significant impact. The tournament will continue to be played at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes, with the championship prize money of £70,000 in the previous five editions, with a total prize money of £360,000, the defending champion of this tournament is Judd Trump, and the first year champion is China's Liang Wenbo.
Five years ago, Liang Wenbo, who had been in the professional career for 12 years, set out for Evente City, Manchester, and like every day he went to the field, he confidently participated in this new event that had just been launched. The first round of clean sheets world champion Dort, the second round of narrow victory over Sean Murphy, until the semi-final 6-5 victory over Bingham, few people believe that Liang Wenbo can realize his dream in the final, because his next opponent is the 25-year-old Trump, although not as mature as it is now, but the sharpness is even worse. Liang Wenbo led the whole way in the final, but the two consecutive sets lost after 7-4 made the game enter a white-hot, fortunately, Liang Wenbo immediately blasted out a single shot of 62 points to the match point, and finally won the game 9-7, seeing this paragraph, is there already a figure in your mind that Liang Wenbo raised his hands and bounced up? At that moment, his emotions infected fans all over the world through live cameras and are still unforgettable to this day.
Somewhat regrettably, in the next few editions, Liang Wenbo played mediocre in this competition, including the just-concluded match of the season, losing to the black player McLeod and missing the regular competition. O'Sullivan, Bingham, Selby and Trump took turns to win the title, terrifying as Little, and even won three of the four "Home Series" titles last season, as if every early autumn, starting with the English Open, the smoke of the new season is getting worse. At 20:00 on September 19, Liang Wenbo competed with McLeod for a regular spot in the qualifying round, during which Ding Junhui played against Andrew Padgett, and O'Sullivan's opponent was David Liri.
Although the game proceeded as scheduled, the impact of the epidemic can still not be ignored, and the sudden withdrawal before the game touched the hearts of many fans. An hour before the start of the tournament, World Snooker announced the passive withdrawal of Chinese players Zhou Yuelong and Zhang Jiankang, as close contacts of the new crown case, Zhou Yuelong and Zhang Jiankang had to withdraw from the English Open, and Ross Muir and Jack Jones will be substituted.
Zhou Yuelong, who is currently ranked 17th in the world, is in a critical period of impacting the TOP16, every competition this year is related to whether he can debut in the Masters before January next year, this passive withdrawal is really stifling, in any case, we can only expect Zhou Yuelong to return as soon as possible, play competitive in the next event, but also look forward to the wonderful performance of Ding Junhui, Liang Wenbo and all Chinese players.