Ronnie O’Sullivan and Judd Trump are some of the several big-name snooker stars heading to China for the festive period, and they will compete in the Macau Masters event which begins on Christmas Day. While many sportsmen are spending the day at home celebrating the day with their families, O’Sullivan and Trump are starring in a tournament that will be delighting Chinese fans at the snooker table.
O’Sullivan, Trump, Mark Williams, Kyren Wilson, Jack Lisowski, Si Jiahui, Ding Junhui and Marco Fu have been confirmed to take part in the event at the Wynn Palace hotel on the south coast of China. The winner receives a whopping £150,000 – quite the Christmas present – with the final of the tournament pencilled in for December 29.
This tournament is separate to the controversial Macau exhibition event, which was postponed to the prior week after Luca Brecel, Mark Selby, John Higgins, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Ali Carter were threatened with disciplinary action after they planned to skip the Northern Ireland Open to take part.
The World Snooker Tour (WST) wrote in a statement that those players would be in breach of their contract by attending the big-money exhibition, before it was re-arranged for December 22-24.
O’Sullivan has previously revealed his plans to focus on the Asia circuit as opposed to events elsewhere, and stated his delight at being able to spend Christmas competing in Macau. “The whole experience of attending the Macau press conference in June was perfect,” he said.