The fourth ranking event of the snooker season is due to get underway this week with the fourth edition of the Indian Open.
With the event missing a number of star names including Mark Selby, Ding Junhui, Judd Trump and Ronnie O’Sullivan, it presents another opportunity for one of the game’s lesser lights to shine yet again.
So far this season, we’ve seen maiden ranking event wins for Ryan Day and Luca Brecel as well as a second victory for Michael White, while the serial event winners have yet to really get going.
If you add into the mix that the event will largely played in a best-of-seven frame format and that the winner in each of the last two tournaments here have both been first-time winners, it all seems to point towards another dark horse coming through the field to the take the title.
In this category, there a number of candidates including Tom Ford, Ben Woollaston, Hossein Vafaei, David Gilbert and Michael Holt to pinpoint just a few.
And despite some notable absentees, there are plenty of big names left in the field who might sense an ideal opportunity to seize their moment.
Shaun Murphy has finished the past two events as the runner-up, Stephen Maguire has been playing some mightily impressive snooker so far this season and then there’s likes of Mark Allen, Stuart Bingham, Joe Perry and John Higgins who have plenty of experience when it comes to landing titles.
The appeal of tournaments such as these is that the field really is wide open. Players are still at different ends of the scale when it comes to match sharpness, the shorter format allows for the possibility of a barrage of shock results and that little bit of momentum really can count for double.
This tournament promises to have plenty of thrills and spills with the prospect of taking home the winner’s cheque an attainable goal for many – just the way the sport’s supremo Barry Hearn likes it best.
