Richard Mann previews the prestigious Tour Championship, which begins on Monday.
Zhao Xintong’s Rise to the Top
Zhao Xintong will return to Sheffield as reigning world champion and likely favourite to successfully defend the crown he claimed 12 months ago. Zhao’s ascent to the top of the sport has been a remarkable story. In 2021, he won the UK Championship in York in breathtaking style.
Zhao subsequently accepted charges of betting on matches and being party to another player fixing matches. It was a scandal that rocked the sport, but Zhao retuned 20 months later with an apparently clean slate, working his way back from the bottom in quick time and roaring to Crucible glory last spring.
The Chinese was always likely to use that victory as a platform from which to reach greatness, but even his biggest supporters would have to be impressed with how he has handled his first season as world champion. If anything, Zhao has thrived under the spotlight and with that greater weight of expectation. He looks every inch the next dominant force in the game.
Recent Victories and Form
His first title after Sheffield came at the valuable Riyadh Season Championship in November, that following an understandably sticky start, and he’s gone from strength to strength since. The 28-year-old got better as the World Grand Prix progressed, in the end beating Zhang Anda 10-6 in a high-quality final, and he added the Players Championship to his CV with victory over John Higgins a few weeks later.
The burst he produced from 7-6 down to beat Higgins in that final was first-class, understandably drawing comparisons with Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan, and the calibre of players he beat that week were of the highest order, including Shaun Murphy and Mark Allen.
He was knocked out of the World Open relatively early following a busy spell, and he’s expected to be nice and fresh for this critical juncture in the season.
Tour Championship Preview and Betting Odds
In a campaign that has been devoid of multiple winners, and with the game seemingly searching for someone to take the sport by the scruff of the neck, Zhao has been the one to rise above his contemporaries, particularly after Christmas, suggesting he could well be world number one in the not too distant future.
When he’s stepped up a gear, nobody has been able to live with Zhao, and as we saw at the Crucible, he is going to prove incredibly hard to beat in that type of form over multiple sessions. His ability to recover from a bad couple of frames, or even hours, with a level of destruction very few can match sets him apart from so many.
As one of the four seeded players in the draw, Zhao starts at the quarter-finals stage in Manchester, where he will fancy his chances against either Wu Yize or Chris Wakelin. From there, it will be one of either Mark
2pts Zhao Xintong to win the Tour Championship at 7/2 (General)