World Snooker dismisses table concerns at Masters

World Snooker has dismissed concerns over the standard of the table at the Masters, saying it has found “no” issues.

The second Triple Crown event of the season got under way on Sunday at London’s Alexandra Palace, with defending champion Shaun Murphy and current UK title holder Mark Selby falling at the first hurdle to Chinese duo Wu Yize and Xiao Guodong.

While both results rank as upsets, not for the first time this season, the focus quickly shifted on to the playing conditions which were criticised by seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry and six-time Crucible winner Steve Davis.

Both suggested there was a problem with balls drifting off line and clinging to cushions before dropping into corner pockets in both contests.

“There’s something wrong with the table,” Davis said during Xiao’s victory over Selby.

“It happened this afternoon. The balls are hugging the rail. The top slates need levelling up. The table fitters need to go out and check the level of the top slate.

“If those balls are hugging that top rail, then it’s going to make the game incredibly easy to make big breaks. It’s also wrong that a ball should go in that easily. This looks like it’s not level.”

In response, the organisers of the invitation-only Masters, which typically features only the top-16 ranked players in the world, said: “The table is checked before, during and after every match, as is standard at any event.

On Monday afternoon, 1997 world champion Ken Doherty intimated that any problem had been “fixed” during Mark Allen’s 6-2 win over Mark Williams.

However, the Northern Irishman expressed his own worries over the state of the table in his post-match media interviews.

“I didn’t have anything along the black rail to test that but I did see what happened yesterday with Mark’s [Selby] shot and Wu Yize before that had one that drifted off a bit,” said Allen.

“It’s a difficult job the fitters have got and I’ve got in enough trouble over the years calling them out on stuff. The one thing I noticed from today’s match was it was drifting a bit from green to yellow across that way of the table, but it’s something I pointed out to [tournament director] Paul Collier so I’m sure they will look at it after the game.”

It is far from the only occasion this term that players or commentators have raised issues around tournament tables.

Scotland’s John Higgins delivered a withering assessment of the “pathetic” conditions at the Riyadh Season Snooker Championship.