All the headlines ahead of this tournament have been about the return of John Higgins after his six month ban – and it’ll be interesting to see his form and what sort of reaction he gets from the crowd in Telford. The UK is the Championship I used to go and watch at Uni – when it was at York – so I’ve got a real soft spot for it. I watched Ding Junhui win his first ranking title there – beating Steve Davis back in 2005 (it really doesn’t seem that long ago!) and saw most of the people I’d been watching on TV for years play live there too. After the recent debut of the shorter form Power Snooker I’m looking forward to seeing the longer form of the game again, partly because it’ll be interesting to see if anything’s changed in the way players approach the game.
It should be a competitive tournament as well – Ding is the defending champion again, but there is a lot of strength and depth in the field – and not just the usual suspects. Add to that all the talk about Higgins – which will continue whether or not he makes a run and I’m settling down for an exciting 9 days of snooker. I hope you are too.
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