Davis denied coveted top 16 berth

Mark Davis agonisingly missed out on a place in world snooker’s top 16 at the season’s first ‘cut-off point’.

The St Leonards player retained 17th position in the latest ranking list published this week and was just 350 points behind 16th-placed Martin Gould.

As a result, Davis will have to qualify for the UK Championship and German Masters, and is likely to miss out on a spot in the prestigious Masters tournament in January.

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It all boiled down to last weekend’s Players Tour Championship event six - the first ever professional snooker tournament to be held in Poland.

Davis survived a huge scare against Welsh amateur Gareth Allen in the first round. Despite compiling a break of exactly 100 in frame three, Davis found himself 3-1 down before reeling off three in a row to scrape through.

But Davis lost by the same score against 43rd-ranked Nigel Bond, the 45-year-old World Championship runner-up in 1995 and reigning Snooker Shoot-Out winner, in round two the same evening.

So despite Gould crashing out in the first round to Liu Chuang, Davis narrowly avoided being among the seeded players in a ranking event for the first time during a 20-year professional career which has peaked in recent times.

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Bexhill-based Jimmy Robertson, ranked 57, defeated amateur Shane Castle 4-1 in round one before surrendering a 2-0 lead to lose 4-2 against 38th-ranked Michael Holt in round two.

The full articles will appear in tomorrow’s Observers.