Es only happens once a year that the global elite series of the Main Tour in snooker comes to Germany. That’s why the enthusiasm for the German Masters in Berlin’s Tempodrom remains as present with every edition as it was at the premiere twelve years ago. Supporters from near and far queue long and bravely in freezing temperatures to get into the arena and fill it to the last of 2000 seats. There they regularly witness a special phenomenon: the best cracks of the complex billiard variant, who are otherwise only known from television, transform into real people – and try their hand at an oversized table with 22 game balls that nobody can master perfectly.
Only the best? It may not have seemed that way to some visitors this year in particular – there were noticeably few big names among the 32 starters. This was mainly due to the increasingly crowded season calendar: he pushed the world elite into pre-qualification right after the end of the two-week UK Championship in November 2022.
Ford first resolved, then frustrated
There, a few winning sets will decide who of the 128 professionals on the main tour will be allowed to travel to the final tournament. However, because the championship demands everything from the aces, they tend to be overplayed afterwards – and therefore vulnerable. The times when a single athlete (or a single athlete) dominated almost all competitions are over once and for all, not only in cycling.
However, close matches were delivered at least as often as before from Wednesday to Sunday. It was the hour of the underdogs, from the pros from the second row to the backbenchers, who saw the chance for a big moment under the circumstances. It’s no offense to count Tom Ford among them. The 39-year-old pro from Leicestershire has never finished higher than 24th in the finals in twenty years on the Tour. He reached the semi-finals of the UK Championship in 2018 and 2022 and had never reached the final of a real ranked tournament. Until the key to it fell at his feet on Saturday evening.
Old patterns: Tom Ford shows his I’m always unlucky expression.
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Bild: picture alliance / contrastphoto
Again the underdog and again shortly before losing the decider, i.e. the all-important last frame (game): It was all too familiar feelings that drove Ford into his clothes at the end of his semifinals against the highly rated Jack Lisowski, a declared crowd favorite . Only this time Ford managed not to give up at the score of 0:52 points – and to exploit a small mistake by his opponent for a last, nerve-racking series. The notorious self-destructor wanted the 6:5 victory he fought for to be understood as proof of new mental strength. “This time I kept my head up,” he stated, noticeably relieved.
“Not good enough to finish second”
For the hoped-for first win on the Main Tour, however, Ford had to bring final opponent Ali Carter to his knees on Sunday. After his victory at the World Open (2016), the smart veteran from Essex had to struggle more with serious illnesses such as cancer and Crohn’s disease than with opponents at the green table and has not won a trophy since.
Nevertheless, he brought the self-image of a former winner with him to Berlin, who no longer wants to hear that he is still playing quite well – after everything that has happened. A defeat in the final would be “destructive” for him, the 43-year-old stated after the narrow 6: 5 win over Robert Milkins on Saturday: “For top boys like me who have already won, it’s not good enough, second to become.”
A day later, in a duel with Tom Ford, Carter put his pithy words into action. A first streak of six winning frames gave him a 6-3 lead before the break; a second over four frames brought him over the finish line at a clear 10:3. Seldom on the Main Tour has it been so clear what a difference some top-level experience makes.
While the “Captain”, as they call Carter because of his pilot’s license, acted more and more flawlessly over time and thus kept up the pressure, Tom Ford fell back into old patterns after unfortunate attempts – and put on his I’m always unlucky face again on.
“It’s frustrating,” Ford said in the post-match interview, thanking viewers; Towards the evening they had tried louder and louder to set up the unfortunate raven. The great enthusiasm is the last thing that dries up in and around the Tempodrom. This will be the case again next year when the tournament gets two more days of competition – and with it a few more well-known heroes.
