Snooker Referee Sami Erkkilä last week received a rare assignment for Finns.
The umbrella organization of the sport, World Snooker, invited Erkkilä to judge the first ever professional tour competition held in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
– The hospitality was especially memorable. I have never been to a tournament before where the judges are taken such good care of in terms of food, rides and accommodation, says Erkkilä.
Saudi Arabia has profiled itself in the sports market in recent years as an active event organizer. Several sports have landed in the country of 36 million inhabitants, even if the Saudis’ sporting success in them is non-existent.
Snooker is no exception. 17 amateurs, including seven Saudi players, were entered in the competition called Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters. Each of them was eliminated in the first round of the competition. Six of the seven Saudi players did not win a single set.
However, the framework and the monetary prizes that are being distributed are their own chapter. According to Erkkilä, the playing conditions were optimal for snooker.
– The temperature in the arena was a constant 21 degrees all the time, and the humidity percentage was a constant 15. Perfect conditions, says Erkkilä.
Big rewards
World No. 1 player, performed in Finland in May Judd Trump won the tournament and pocketed 500,000 British pounds, or about 592,000 euros. The amount is the same that was won in May for the snooker world championship.
The cash prizes of the Saudi tournament totaled more than 2.7 million euros.
Normally, in ranking tournaments that affect the world rankings, qualifiers are held somewhere other than the tournament venue, from which the players have to clear their way to the main series.
The Saudi organizers transported all professional tour stick players and the aforementioned amateurs to the venue, a total of a record 144 players. This made the tournament in Saudi Arabia a historic one.
One big tent
The race was also organized in an exceptional setting. According to Erkkilä, the games were played in an arena that was built in the Saudi Arabian Olympic Center on the outskirts of Riyadh.
– The arena was a giant fabric tent built on metal structures. There were no concrete walls, Erkkilä says.
According to Erkkilä, the tent pit was placed in the Olympic center in a place surrounded by soccer fields and a swimming stadium.
– As far as I know, there was nothing at the place of the tent three weeks ago. It could have been an ordinary parking lot.
– The TV viewer certainly had no idea what kind of place the matches were played in. In the TV pictures, the view was the same as in any English concrete building.
Although the arena was unique for its snooker competition, there is nothing special about the one-off construction. For example, some of the Olympic and Paralympic venues in Paris were erected only for the duration of the Games.
– As far as I understand, the feedback from the players was so good that the same tent structure will be put up next year as well, says Erkkilä.
No public celebration
Professional snooker was played in Saudi Arabia for the second time.
The debut competition held in March was an invitation-only tournament for the ten best players in the world rankings. At that time, the matches attracted superstars to the stands Ronnie O’Sullivan’s except for encounters, only a few dozen spectators.
There had been no significant change in half a year.
Erkkilä refereed ten matches in five days, in seven of which the spectators could count with the fingers of one hand.
Erkkilä judged, among other things, two world champions in the cup phase of 32 players, By Mark Selby and by Neil Robertson the top match between According to his estimate, there were 15 spectators.
The crowd found the main table with a couple of hundred seats in the stands in the final stages of the tournament.
The audience numbers of the Saudis can be understood by the fact that more than 10,000 tickets were sold for the eight-player invitational tournament organized in Helsinki’s Kulttuuritalo in May.
One match organized in Helsinki gathered more audience than the entire Saudi tournament combined.
Women included as usual
As Saudi Arabia has become one of the biggest organizers of sporting events, the country’s human rights have been on the back burner. One of the most talked about topics has been the position of women in a male-dominated society.
Sports events sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia have been practically exclusively men’s competitions, but snooker is an exception as a mixed sport.
The best female players in the world, England Reanne Evansof Thailand Mink Nutcharut and Baipat Siripaporn and China Bai Yulucompeted in Saudi Arabia normally among men. Out of the four, Nutcharut won one match in the competition.
The women were also featured in the final stage of the tournament, when the German judge Mike Kesseler judged the top match of the quarter-finals between Trump and Robertson.
When the 16 best in the world ranking joined the final rounds of 32 players, two other top players in the field were also seen in the judging panel, Tatiana Woollaston and Hilde Moens.
– In this sense, this tournament was no different from games organized elsewhere in the world. The Saudi player also shook the hand of the female referee who judged in his match quite normally, Erkkilä says.