The 2024 Snooker Riyadh Season Masters came to a successful conclusion. World No. 1 Ronnie “The Rocket” O’Sullivan beat Luca Brecher 5-2 to win the title. In this tournament, “China’s first brother” Ding Junhui blasted 138 points is the highest single shot, 4-time World Champion “wizard” John Higgins missed the 167 gold ball opportunity.
The 2024 Snooker Riyadh Season Masters is an invitational tournament with very high specifications and prize money. The tournament’s prize money is distributed as follows: the total prize money is 785,000 pounds. The biggest feature of the tournament is the setting of a very high prize money of 167 golden balls, the players who hit 167 points will be rewarded with $500,000 dollars.
The rule of 167 points gold ball is: at the beginning of each game the gold ball will be placed on the side of the bank adjacent to the tee line, aligned with the coffee ball spot. If a player accidentally hits the gold ball, or touches it before hitting the target ball, the penalty is 4 points. The gold ball will remain on the table as long as the player has the possibility of hitting 147; if there is no possibility of hitting 147, the gold ball will be taken off the table and repositioned at the gold ball spot for the next round.”
The only player in this tournament who had a chance to hit a 167 gold ball was 4-time World Champion John Higgins, who came close to blasting a 147 and a 167 gold ball in the second round of his match against his old rival, 3-time World Champion Mark Williams.
In the first game of this match, Higgins was very magical to complete 15 groups of “red ball + black ball” combination, as long as the remaining 7 colored balls, there will be a chance to impact the 167 gold balls. Unfortunately, the yellow ball in the attack did not score, missed this feat.
In this tournament, the highest single score was accomplished by Ding Junhui. He blasted a single 138 in the first set in the second round against Alistair Carter, which was the highest single score of the tournament, despite losing 3-4 and not advancing. As the tournament only had a 167 Gold Ball Award, Ding was not able to collect the highest single shot award.
