July is often an extremely busy month for sports fans with a number of top-class events taking place including Wimbledon and the British Grand Prix. However, it’s also a hugely exciting time for snooker fans with the brand new season getting underway and once again, there will be significant expectation ahead of this upcoming campaign.
The 2021-22 season will consist of 18 ranking events and as always, there will be three Triple Crown events, starting with the UK Championship in November. The season will conclude in May with the World Championships at the Crucible. Alongside a number of familiar venues, Leicester’s Morningside Arena returns to the calendar for the first time in 17 years. It will host a number of events including the Snooker Shootout and the British Open in August. A new event has also be added to the calendar for 2021-22 with the Turkish Masters taking place in Antalya at the end of September. There will be a grand total of 122 professional players taking part in this year’s tour including the top 64 players according to the 2020-21 prize money rankings.
Players
Ronnie O’Sullivan
Ronnie O’Sullivan remains hugely popular with snooker fans with mesmerising performances and his outspoken views helping to increase the profile of the sport across the last couple of decades. As a result, The Rocket tends to be popular in the pre-tournament outright betting markets and although his form has fluctuated over the last couple of seasons, online sportsbooks regularly price him up as one of the favourites due to his unpredictability. Snooker remains popular with punters in both the UK and Ireland and all of the major bookmakers tend to price up the major tournaments months in advance. For example, Irish bookmaker Boylesports already has Ronnie O’Sullivan priced up as the 4/1 second favourite for the 2022 World Championship.
Snooker bettors may be put off by O’Sullivan’s prohibitive match odds during the early stages of an event, however, tournament accumulators during the first and second rounds remain one of the most popular ways of wagering on the sport and these often allow punters to extract some value from the market.
The Rocket may still be relatively short in the betting, however, his recent form has been questionable and he can occasionally become distracted by side projects. He won the World Championships at the end of the 2019-20 campaign, however, despite reaching several finals last year, he failed to clinch any silverware. Nevertheless, it is impossible to write him off, and his immeasurable ability to pull out a top-class performance gives him every chance of success this season.
Judd Trump
Current world number one Judd Trump will aiming to take his fantastic form into the new season and the Bristolian will be aiming to go one better at the UK Championship later this year. He missed a simple pink with the scores tied at 9-9 allowing Neil Robertson to secure his third victory in the event. His successes last season included the English Open, German Masters and the World Grand Prix. Despite ending the campaign on a disappointing note with a quarter-final defeat to Shaun Murphy at the World Championships, however, he’ll be confident of remaining at the top of his game for the next 12 months.
Mark Selby
Reigning world champion Mark Selby was successful at the Crucible in May, and the Jester from Leicester will be hoping to carry on where he left off. He will be buoyed by the fact the fact that multiple tournaments are set to be staged in his hometown this season and he will surely be priced up as the favourite for each of those events. Selby was also victorious in the Scottish Open and the European Masters last season and narrowly missed out on success in the Snooker Shoot-Out. He will also face a mouth-watering re-match with his World Championship sparring partner Shaun Murphy at the British Open in August.
Neil Robertson
The popular left-hander remains the most successful player from outside of the UK and he will be feeling confident that he can enjoy another prosperous ten months at the highest level. He was victorious at the UK Championship last season and was also a finalist at the Champion of Champions event. It’s over a decade since the Aussie was successful at the Crucible and he will be hoping that he can put an end to that barren spell in May 2022.
These household names will be joined by several players who competed on the tour championship last season and will enter the second year of their two-year tour cards. A further 14 players will also be promoted from Q-School.
It is set to be another fascinating season of top-level snooker and both sports fans and punters will have plenty of action to follow over the next ten months.