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Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Mandy Fisher: Ladies’s snooker president predicts narrowing of gender hole


World Women's Snooker president Mandy Fisher (right) presenting the 2022 Scottish Open runner-up prize to Mink Nutcharut
World Ladies’s Snooker president Mandy Fisher (proper) presenting the 2022 Scottish Open runner-up prize to Mink Nutcharut

Ladies’s snooker head Mandy Fisher says the “new technology” of feminine gamers will have the ability to compete with males.

The previous world champion is now the president of World Ladies’s Snooker, the organisation she based in 1981.

From the times when some golf equipment had indicators studying ‘No girls allowed’, Fisher believes the game is now near having a stage taking part in discipline.

Within the BBC snooker podcast Framed, Fisher spoke of the good strides the ladies’s sport has taken in recent times.

The introduction of two-year tour playing cards for ladies on the World Snooker Tour in 2021 has been key to elevating the game to the purpose the place girls gamers are “function fashions” to women coming by way of, and the place Ng On-yee – who final yr beat former world champion Ken Doherty in a qualifying occasion – is a “celebrity” in Hong Kong, she says.

“It is completely enormous. It is a platform. It is a studying curve,” mentioned Fisher.

“It has introduced extra gamers to the sport as a result of they’re realizing that, like [19-year-old British Open champion] Bai Yulu – she in all probability would have remained in China and simply performed from there had it not been for the truth that we got the tour playing cards. So she got here to the Ladies’s World Championship for the primary time ever this yr to try to win that tour card.

“So it simply provides improbable alternatives, not only for girls, however for minority international locations that do not play snooker. It simply builds snooker in every of these international locations – for ladies in addition to for males.”

World primary Reanne Evans, Rebecca Kenna, 2022 girls’s world champion Mink Nutcharut and reigning world champion Baipat Siripaporn have all been provided tour playing cards.

Evans made historical past in January by changing into the primary girl to beat a person in a televised rating snooker occasion, when she beat Stuart Bingham within the Snooker Shoot Out.

Fisher predicts that such wins will develop into extra commonplace.

“Sure, they have not received many matches. They’ve received frames, which is a stepping stone,” she mentioned.

Hong Kong snooker player Ng On-yee
Ng On-yee is a “celebrity” in Hong Kong, says Mandy Fisher

“However you might have to remember that that they’ve by no means performed till latest years on the Star tables.

“You may’t clarify to folks there may be a lot distinction from taking part in on membership tables, and until you have bought your individual Star desk put in, you aren’t going to go to a event and play your finest as a result of they’re simply so completely different from anything that most individuals have ever performed on.

“However you may see the usual enhancing on a regular basis. The ladies have received matches, they don’t seem to be on the backside of the rating listing they usually’re doing rather well.

“You have to give folks an opportunity. Whether or not you are male or feminine, approaching the tour you are in all probability going to battle. It is like something, to get used to the environment, the surroundings.

“To play your finest it will probably take gamers years and years. And we all know that as a result of there are gamers coming by way of now, who’ve been taking part in for 20 years and never finished something, however in these previous few years they’re doing rather well.”

Fisher added that the ladies’s sport has come a good distance because the darkish days when she was world champion, in 1984.

“Most ladies do not go in snooker golf equipment,” she added. “They go in pubs, and in pubs there are pool tables. I am not saying pool is not skilful, as a result of I do know it’s skilful. I am simply saying that the leap from being good at pool to being good at snooker is a really troublesome one to take.

“I used to be not in a position to play in all of the snooker golf equipment, or I used to be the primary girl ever to go and play in these golf equipment since you would have indicators saying ‘No girls allowed’, so it takes generations to recover from that.

“Now there are academies and extra snooker centres that make girls extra welcome, and you might be seeing extra folks taking part in.

“It should take a while, however I simply cannot see any bodily cause why girls shouldn’t be nearly as good as males.”

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