Snooker Calander

Is it just me or has the snooker calendar become boring, in fact has snooker lost all appeal. Take a number of sports and each one is defined by major tournaments. For example

Golf: US Masters, US Open, British Open, US PGA
Tennis: US Open, Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon
Soccer: Certain Premier League fixtures, FA Cup, Champions League Final
Cycling: Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta de Espana

....and so on. Yet snooker is defined by one major event the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield. Outside of this there’s not much to remember in snooker tournaments of any great importance. It also seems one has to achieve very little in the sport to retain a high ranking. I remember a few years back Ken Doherty was ranked in the top six, but had not won a tournament in two years.

Snooker is dead at the moment, cricket has reinvented itself with fast paced exciting game of twenty20, maybe snooker needs something new too. They could start with the calendar. I think its time to end the seasonal timeline, and make snooker an annual calendar. Snooker should follow Formula One, start in March and have a tournament every two to three weeks until lets say October, move the World Championships to mid season. But an end to top 16 player tournaments open it up to 32 players, speed round the first few games in any tournament and then get to the serious stuff. Revise the ranking system and basically start from scratch.

Introduce three extra majors to join the World Championships, like a European Championship, Asian Championship and the Americans Championship, four majors up for grabs and all 32 player events. Time to reinvent snooker and add in some excitement, but a limit on the number of snookers a player is allowed in a frame creating attacking snooker. It would be a shame to lose snooker and less face it theirs no more players like Alex Higgins to save snooker this time around.