Mark Williams unhappy with new format of 2011 UK Championship: 2011-12 Snooker Season
Snooker governing body, World Snooker, has made several changes in the playing format of a couple of events in 2011-12 Snooker Season. Those events include 2011 UK Championship and Snooker Premier
League 2011. Many snooker fans and professionals welcomed these format changes but there are some including Welshman, Mark Williams, who are not in favour of these changes.
Williams believes that these changes limit a player’s potential to play long matches. The young generation of professional snooker players might lose the stamina of participating in long duration
matches like those in World Snooker Championship.
While answering his fans on a Chinese local website, Williams replied to a question about the new format for UK Championship, “I am not in favour of it and neither would most of the top pros like
as the top boys would say that you have more time to get into a match, but as we got Barry Hearn in to shake our game up, we got to support him 100% and go along with it.”
However, World Snooker chairman, Barry Hearn has some other plans in his mind when he decided to change the format. He believes that short duration matches will bring more excitement and thrill into
the matches that will result in more snooker fans. Many professionals liked the decision as they believed it is necessary for the popularity of snooker.
Since Hearn took charge of World Snooker management, his focus has been to promote the game and increase its viewership across the globe. He intends to attract youth towards the game that’s why he
planned to bring these changes. Hearn believes that matches of short duration with fast play will bring youngsters towards the game and it will flourish across people of all age groups.
The 2011 UK Championship will commence from December 3 at York Barbican Centre with the revised format. According to the new format, all matches, from qualifiers to the quarter-finals, will be best-of-11
frames while the semi-finals and final matches format will not be changed. They will remain best-of-17 and best-of-19 frames encounters respectively.
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