In the opening match of the 2024 Snooker Saudi Arabia International Masters (also known as the Riyadh Carnival Season Masters) held in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the only Chinese player invited to participate in the tournament, Ding Junhui, first swept away the wildcard player, Omar Alajani, 4-0, and then defeated the veteran nicknamed “Captain” Ali Carter, 3-4, and did not qualify for the last eight.
This year’s tournament has a total prize money of up to $1 million, and for the first time, the first player to shoot a 147 and score a 20-point gold ball, with a maximum single score of 167, will receive an additional $500,000 in prizes. With such a special tournament system and the attraction of huge awards, ranked the world’s top eight players are absent, even before often to various reasons to miss the ranking of the tournament O’Sullivan have clearly expressed the desire for the gold ball prize money.
This tournament is also the first time to set up the organization, this year is an invitational tournament, from next year to become a ranking tournament. Originally only invited the world ranking of the TOP8 players to participate, in that case ranked in the 9th Ding Junhui is not eligible to go to Riyadh. In order to expand the influence of the tournament, the organizing committee of the tournament expanded the eligibility before the start of the tournament to Top 10 players can be invited to participate in the tournament, and then invited two local Saudi players to join the tournament as a wildcard player, a total of 12 people to participate in the competition.
Ding Junhui’s signing was very good, and despite being ranked low amongst the regular participants, it was well worth it to face the wildcard players first. Ding’s first round opponent was local 44-year-old amateur snooker player Omar Alajani, and the match was a professional player meeting an amateur in a pool hall, and the result was of course unsurprising, as Ding quickly advanced to the next round with a 4-0 sweep. It’s worth noting that there were very few spectators at the tournament, and it seems that the Saudis have no interest in the sport, which is far from the organizing committee’s original goal of popularizing and developing snooker in Saudi Arabia. The second wildcard match, even with Higgins, the “Wizard”, was also empty.
Ding then faced Ali Carter, who had won only four of their 19 career meetings and had recently suffered seven consecutive losses. But in this game, although Ding Junhui played a single shot 138 points, 120 points, 75 points, but he still ended up 3-4 against Carter, not to the last eight. quarter-final matchups for: Allen vs. Selby; Breacher vs. Carter; Trump vs. Murphy; O’Sullivan vs. Higgins.
