Cue Sports Weekly - Wu Yize Wins Shenzhen, O'Sullivan Gets His Lifeline, and the Race for York Tightens

Last week I left you at the Shenzhen Open quarter-finals, and the bottom half of that draw played out pretty much the way it looked on paper. Wu Yize won the title, climbed to second in the world, and in doing so quietly changed who gets to play in Leicester next month.

That second part is the one I find more interesting, so we'll get there. Pool had a decent week too, with a familiar name winning a world title in Bali and a sad piece of news about a legend of both games.

Shenzhen: Wu Yize Backs Up the Crucible

Wu beat Yuan Sijun 10-5 on Sunday to win the Shenzhen Open, his first ranking title since the World Championship in May. It's his third ranking title overall, and all three have come in the last twelve months. He's 22, which still feels slightly mad to type.

The £177,000 top prize lifts him to a career-high second in the world behind Zhao Xintong. That's the first time in the sport's history the top two ranked players have both been Chinese, and it was the second all-Chinese final of the season after Chang Bingyu's win over Zhao at the Wuhan Open, according to SnookerHQ's final report.

Wu opened the final with a 117 and led 3-1 at the interval, but it wasn't a procession. Yuan, playing his first ranking final, won a couple of scrappy frames to level and even led for a moment before Wu took the opening session 5-4. That one-frame cushion proved crucial. Wu won three of the first four in the evening, opened up a three-frame gap, and finished it in the 15th.

The rerun of the Crucible final I flagged last week went his way as well. He edged Shaun Murphy 5-4 in the quarter-finals, then beat Judd Trump 6-1 in the semis.

Yuan won't be too down about it. A first ranking final lifts him to a career-high 26th in the world.

Why O'Sullivan Is Suddenly Back in the Champion of Champions

Here's the knock-on effect. Wu had already qualified for the Champion of Champions through his win at last year's International Championship and his world title. Winning in Shenzhen made him a repeat qualifier, which freed up a place further down the criteria list.

That's where Ronnie O'Sullivan comes in. The World Seniors Championship was added to the qualifying criteria last month, and he won it in May. With Wu doubling up, SnookerHQ reports that O'Sullivan will be sent an invitation to the event at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester, 9 to 15 November. The winner takes £150,000.

Whether he takes it up is another matter. He's a four-time winner, but he also pulled out of the event in 2015 and 2023 while he was the reigning champion, and he's been skipping a lot of the UK-based events lately. There's one more twist. The Northern Ireland Open is the last qualifying event, and if there's another repeat winner in Belfast, the final spot goes to the highest-ranked player not already in. As things stand that's Neil Robertson.

The Race for York Comes Down to Two Events

Only two tournaments are left to count towards the UK Championship's top 16, the Northern Ireland Open and the International Championship. Together they carry £275,000 in ranking prize money, so there's plenty of room for movement at the bottom of the cut.

And that's where it's tight. Zhou Yuelong sits in the last automatic place on £358,700, with Chang Bingyu a whisker behind on £355,200. That's £3,500 between 16th and 17th, with seven players within roughly £55,000 of Zhou, according to SnookerHQ's rankings race breakdown.

Mark Selby will be top seed as defending champion, with Wu second. The winner in York gets £312,500, a record for the UK Championship, which runs 28 November to 6 December with qualifying from 21 to 26 November.

There's also a Mark Allen wrinkle. He's provisionally 11th, but he hasn't entered or has withdrawn from every event this season. If he doesn't enter the UK Championship, the player in 17th could effectively slide into a top-16 place. If he enters and then withdraws, his scheduled opponent just gets a bye. Worth watching.

Away from the main tour, Stan Moody beat Gary Wilson to take the Snooker 900 title, per SnookerHQ.

Pool: Rita Chou Wins Again, and Sad News About Allison Fisher

Taiwan's Rita Chou won the women's 9-ball world title in Bali on Sunday, her second after the 2023 title. She beat defending champion Seo Seoa of South Korea 3-1 in sets and collected US$55,000, per Focus Taiwan. It's the second time a Taiwanese player has won this title twice.

In the same Bali week, the WPA's news page shows Spain winning the men's doubles world title. Over in India, 144 players from 42 nations have kicked off the Commonwealth Cue Sports Championships in Ahmedabad.

And in China, the new Duya Legends season opened in Qianwei with 802 athletes. Zheng Xiaohuai took home ¥2 million at the Golden Nine Open there. If that name sounds familiar, he was beaten 140-82 in June by Wu Jiaqing in the final that paid ¥10 million, the biggest first prize in the sport's history. Zheng will be glad of a better week.

Then the sadder bit. Allison Fisher, the Duchess of Doom, has announced she's retiring from professional competition after being diagnosed with the early stages of Parkinson's disease. Her statement, as shared in this AZBilliards thread, says the condition has begun to affect the precision she needs to compete at the top, and that this is the end of one chapter, not of her journey in cue sports.

Fisher was a world champion at snooker before she moved to America in 1995 and became arguably the greatest women's pool player of all time. Whichever game you play, you've probably learned something from watching her. Best wishes to her.

Heyball: Quiet Week, and a Quick Clarification

I can't find a fresh world-level Heyball result this week, so I won't pretend otherwise. The most recent big one is still Pune in August, where Gareth Potts and Kelly Fisher took the world titles.

One thing worth clearing up, because the two get mixed up. The big-money Chinese-table results you'll see in the headlines this week are Golden Nine, not Heyball. Both use the smaller table with a napped cloth, but Golden Nine is 9-ball scored on points.

If you want the basics on Heyball itself, the comparison on the tools page is the place to start.

Drill of the Week: The Diagonal Stop Ladder

Last week's Cut Ladder was all about judging the angle. This week takes the angle away completely. You pot straight, and your only job is controlling what the cue ball does afterwards.

The set-up uses the corner-to-corner diagonal, because any ball sitting on that line is a dead-straight pot into the corner pocket. Put a red object ball 80 percent of the way along the diagonal towards your target pocket. Then mark three cue ball spots further back on the same line, at 60, 40 and 20 percent. Call them A, B and C.

Measured centre to centre from the red, that's about 22, 45 and 67 inches on a 9-foot table, or roughly 17, 35 and 52 inches on a 7-footer.

Here's the task. Pot the red from A and stop the cue ball within one ball width of where it was at contact. Do it twice in a row, then move to B, then C. Miss the pot, or let the cue ball drift outside the stop zone, and you restart that rung only, not the whole ladder. Count every shot. The minimum is six, and I'd call anything under 12 a solid first run.

A is easy. C is where it gets honest. A stop shot needs the cue ball to be sliding, not rolling, when it hits the red, and the further it travels the more it wants to start rolling. So as a starting point, hit A with centre ball, add a touch of bottom at B, and a bit more at C. Adjust from there until the cue ball dies on the spot.

Don't worry if your first few attempts at C leave the ball creeping forward. That's exactly what the drill is for. Once it's easy, move the diagonal to the other corner, because most of us have a favourite side.

If you want a gentler warm-up before you start, Snookong is a decent place to settle the cue arm.

Looking Ahead

The Northern Ireland Open runs 18 to 25 October at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, and it's the last chance for most players to shift the York race. Right behind it, the International Championship is in Nanjing from 31 October to 7 November.

Two more dates to circle are the Champion of Champions in Leicester from 9 to 15 November, and the UK Championship from 28 November. And if you missed last week's edition, it's right here.