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Snooker analysis: How good are current crop of young snooker professionals?
"I'm really surprised that we haven’t got much better young players. I think the last really exceptional young player we have had come through was Judd Trump."
That was a Ronnie O’Sullivan quote back in 2022 and for balance, he certainly isn’t alone in calling out the lack of emerging talent since Trump burst onto the scene in 2011.
Several reasons have been cited down the years, ranging from a lack of funding at grass-roots level to the reduction in snooker halls across Britain that may have affected the amateur game and even a cultural shift with a wider range of options for youngsters to pursue these days.
Further down the line, the switch from a tiered system to a flat-draw once players do turn professional may also explain why rookies are failing to gain a proper foothold on the tour given what can be a brutal set of first-round matches, while it’s surely undeniable that the main circuit has never been stronger in terms of depth.
The guaranteed income introduced for this season may take some of the pressure off but surely no-one in the game full time is aspiring to £20k a year and for overseas players, the numbers most certainly don’t add up.
The truly exceptional talents nearly always find a way, though, as Luca Brecel illustrated in such magnificent fashion at the Crucible in May but even then, had Ricky Walden edged their decider we would have been calling out the Belgian’s atrocious Crucible record for a player marked out as a potential star from a very early age (Brecel was 28 when lifting the sport's premier trophy).
It remains to be seen whether the Chinese match-fixing scandal does irreparable damage to the game in the Far East and its potential knock-on effect for the next generation but that seems unlikely with China continuing to fund the sport handsomely post-covid and on a slightly different note, it’s surely only a matter of time before the Saudi operation dips its toe into the snooker arena, which will see prize money improve exponentially.
I do however feel the tide may well be about to turn when it comes to a shift in tournament winners and while there will almost certainly never be an O’Sullivan, Higgins and Williams trio again, they can only dine at top table for so long and there’s real cause for optimism with a talented group of young players starting to emerge.
The table below is an overview of the best teenagers with tour status this season and their performances on the tour aside from matches in the Championship League and the Shootout.
The expected wins column is hopefully a useful guide as to performance levels so far in relation to the opponents faced coupled with the current rating I have for each player at the time (in order of ability I have Mertens and Hongyu a little way ahead of Moody and Pullen respectively).
Of course, this is a very small sample size for players in the embryonic stage of their career and there are a host of factors both on and off the table that will ultimately determine the success levels of the quartet in question.
Lots of promise from Liu
Hopefully the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that Liu Hongyu is the stand out performer of the four so far this term.
Two wins over Shaun Murphy clearly helps his numbers a lot and he also claimed the scalp of both Mark Williams and Ding Junhui en route to the English Open semi-final.
That is a terrific return for someone plying their trade at this level for the first time and he deserves to be considered the brightest prospect from Asia on the evidence of his levels so far.
A return of four wins from 11 matches may look fairly ordinary regarding Liam Pullen but he’s had a pretty tough set of first-round opponents and wins against former world champions Graeme Dott and Stuart Bingham confirm the bright prospect from York is more than capable of holding his own at this level.
As for Moody, a national winner at U14, U16 and U18 level, he’s probably the player with the most hype surrounding him.
Having lived in Halifax, I heard pretty quickly that Moody was hailed as a potential star by many at a very young age and his win over Pullen in the WSF Junior Championship in February secured an automatic two-year tour card.
Moody has openly mentioned his issues with the yips in the form of a delay to get into the correct position to play his shot.
At a young age that is rare and I did briefly wonder about his ability to close a match out when he really should have beaten Brecel in the English Open but a run to the last 16 in Belfast, beating Zhou Yuelong and Gary Wilson, allayed any fears on that score and this precocious talent clearly has it all ahead of him.
Moody has moved to the midlands and is now under the wing of Shaun Murphy, which may help explain his healthy scoring power this season.
That being said, I will adapt an adage from another sport and say it’s centuries for show, all-round match play for dough judged on the graphic with Hongyu’s very modest century rate clearly no barrier to success.
Following on from the success of the Q Tour in Britain and Europe, the 'second tier' has gone global this season and with four tour cards up for grabs it now provides a clear route for amateurs with aspirations to regain professional status or graduate to the main circuit of the first time.
The biggest success from the Q Tour is surely Si Jiahui, who topped the standings in 2021/22 before reaching the semi-final of the World Championship in May.
'As bright a prospect as there is in the game'
Michael Holt currently tops this season’s standings but in second place is Liam Davies, who for my money is as bright a prospect as there is in the game.
A failed attempt at Q School will have hurt Davies (losing in the first event to Iulian Boiko, who was very close to making this article) but you have to admire the way he dusted himself down, winning the first event of the calendar in North Shields, seeing off the established Craig Steadman in the final.
A defeat at the final hurdle to the aforementioned Holt followed in the next event and while he hasn’t been able to continue the excellent work since, Davies has accumulated points and is in prime position to gain one of the available spaces available come the end of the series.
A brace of wins over Fergal O’Brien coupled with victories over Aaron Hill and Noppon Saengkham in regulation events prior to that gives an insight into the raw talent of the Welshman and an extra year learning his craft away from the main tour may be no bad thing in the long run for a player who has a litany of junior titles to his name.
On the whole, the feeling is that this current crop is the best set of youngsters we’ve had for some time and given the nature of this game, there’s a very real chance that I’ve missed a couple of late-maturing players off the list altogether, which makes snooker, and sport in general, so fascinating.
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