2020 Masters (snooker)

during the tournament The Masters is an annual invitational snooker tournament that was first held in 1975, with the top-16 players from the snooker world rankings invited to participate. The tournament was held between 12 and 19 January 2020. World Snooker reported that O'Sullivan had pulled out of the event for "personal reasons", but he later commented that the reason they had stated was a "mistake" and that he had not wished to take part. As in previous years, the top eight seeds were allocated fixed positions in the draw. All matches were played as best-of-11- matches, except for the final which was played over a maximum of 19 frames. The week before the 2020 Masters, organisers World Snooker were re-branded as the "World Snooker Tour". In addition to this change, the Triple Crown was renamed the "Triple Crown Series", and players who had won all three events in the series wore a crown on their playing waistcoats. The 2020 Masters was the first event to feature these changes in branding. The tournament was sponsored, for the last time, by sports betting company Dafabet. Prize fund The prize fund for the event was £725,000, with the winner receiving £250,000. This was an increase of £125,000 over the previous year's total prize fund and an extra £50,000 for the top prize. • Winner: £250,000 • Runner-up: £100,000 • Semi-finals: £60,000 • Quarter-finals: £30,000 • Last 16: £15,000 • Highest break: £15,000 • Total: £725,000 ==Summary==

First round won the opening match of the tournament, defeating the 2019 UK Champion, Ding Junhui. The Masters began on 12 January 2020 with first-round matches played as best-of-11-frames. The 2019 UK champion and eighth seed Ding Junhui took on 15th seed Joe Perry in the opening match. Perry was runner-up in his last appearance at the event in 2017 but had not participated in the intervening two years, whilst Ding had won only three matches at the Masters since winning the event in 2011. He then won two further frames, making it five in a row, to win the match 6–4. ==Tournament draw==

Below are the results from the event. Players in bold denote the match winners, and numbers to the left of the player names are the seedings. Final ==Century breaks==

There was a total of 18 century breaks made during the tournament. World Snooker Tour indicated that they would donate the same amount. • 144, 131, 121 – David Gilbert • 140 – John Higgins • 139 – Kyren Wilson • 136 – Neil Robertson • 135 – Ding Junhui • 133, 126 – Ali Carter • 128, 119, 116 – Judd Trump • 120, 110, 105 – Shaun Murphy • 109 – Stuart Bingham • 105 – Stephen Maguire • 101 – Barry Hawkins ==Broadcasting==

The tournament was broadcast live in the United Kingdom by BBC Sport, as well as on Eurosport in Europe. Worldwide, the event was covered by China Central Television and Superstars Online in China and Sky Sports in New Zealand. The event was simulcast in Hong Kong by Now TV with additional commentary; DAZN covered the event across Canada, Brazil and the United States. ==References==