On Monday we return to Bendigo, a small town North of Melbourne for the Australian Open. There is a good line up this year with Neil Robertson, Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy, Ding Junhui and defending champion Barry Hawkins all competing.
In
the final year of its contract the viewing figures will be heavily scrutinised
over the next week to see if this it’s worth it’s place on the tour. I’m
hopeful that the Australian Open will continue but the event could maybe benefit
from being held in a more major location. A quick check of the Wikipedia page
for Bendigo shows that snooker gets a mention, however the defending champion
is still listed as Stuart Bingham and not updated to Barry Hawkins.
Australians are very proud of their sport
stars and their phenomenal history of hosting top quality sporting events. Neil
Robertson is another they can add to their list and hopefully over time they
will discover his immense talents in this lesser known sport.
Play
begins are 10:00 on Monday morning and will be shown on Bet365 website and
others online sources.
At
this point I would like to wish Ali Carter well in his recovery from Testicular
Cancer.
