Mark Davis is back on the World Snooker Tour just three weeks after dropping off it, after a change to the number of players maintaining professional status through the world rankings.
With 11 players currently suspended due to an ongoing match-fixing investigation and Q School starting on 26 April, WST have extended the tour survival cut-off to number 68 in the world rankings from #64.
A statement read: ‘For this season only, up to 68 players will qualify for the 2023/24 season based on the two-year world rankings after the 2023 Cazoo World Championship rather than the usual 64.
‘This step will see all players on the two-year world rankings up to Mark Davis (but no lower than him in the world rankings), set to finish the season in 68th position, qualify for a further year on the World Snooker Tour, retaining all of the points that they had accrued over the past two years.
‘The move will also result in some changes to the players re-qualifying as the top players on the one-year list with Xu Si and Mark Joyce now qualifying for a full tour card. The one-year list will now be made up of Daniel Wells, Jimmy White, Ian Burns and Hammad Miah, the four highest ranked players on the one-year list who haven’t qualified for the tour through other means, and these four players will receive two-year tour cards.’
Davis memorably lost his tour card for the first time since 1991 at the World Championship qualifiers, defeated 10-9 on the final black in a deciding frame by his good friend Joe Perry when a win would have kept him on tour.
He is playing at the World Seniors Championship on Wednesday night and the 50-year-old heard of the news that he is back on tour just a matter of hours before his opening contest against Tony Knowles.
‘I heard a couple of hours ago from WST, it’s still sinking in, to be honest,’ Davis told Metro.co.uk on Wednesday evening.
‘I was getting my mind ready for this tournament [Seniors] and Q School in a couple of weeks, so it’s still sinking in a little bit that it has happened.
‘But obviously I’m over the moon, delighted to get another year. I didn’t want it to end on the match it ended on, that would have been a pretty sour taste to end my career.
‘I’m really appreciative and I’ll give it everything next year to do the best I can and hopefully I won’t be in that position again next season.’
Davis was obviously aware that players are currently suspended and there was an outside chance of an unlikely return to tour, but he says he had given up on that possibility.
‘No, not at all,’ he said of having any inkling of this announcement. ‘I knew the situation with the players that aren’t playing, so there was maybe a slight chance in the background, but I had no hints that something might happen.
‘I’d given up on it really. I was prepared for the situation and ready to go from here. So it’s a massive result, really thankful to World Snooker and hopefully I’ll make the most of it.’
Perry said he felt sick when he potted the final two balls to knock his friend off tour, and Davis admits it has been a ‘terrible’ time for him before Wednesday’s great news.
‘It was awful, that was the worst couple of weeks snooker-wise that I’ve ever had,’ said Davis.
‘It really was terrible. To lose it like that, it would have been alright if Joe had made one visit, but for me to make a break and then lose it on the pink it was devastating. It was a really bad couple of weeks at home.’
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