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Bingham snookered on top 16 ambitions
BASILDON professional Stuart Bingham is disappointed but not despondent after missing out on a place in the World Snooker Association top 16 rankings.
The new towner will start next season in his highest ever position of 21st, but would have earned a place in the sport's elite if he had made the quarter-finals of the world championship, which ended at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre on Monday.
But he lost at the last 16 stage, being beaten by Joe Perry.
He was in good company in missing out on a top 16 ranking spot as three ex-world champions were among the stars who joined him: Ken Doherty (18th), Mark Williams (22nd) and Steve Davis (29th).
"I'd love to have made the top 16 which would have meant avoiding pre-qualifying for ranking events and gaining a place in invitation tournaments," said Bingham.
"But at least I'm going in the right direction. I was 24th two years ago, then 22nd and now 21st - my best ever.
"Obviously with so many of the top players missing out on the top 16 qualifying will be even tougher next year."
A relatively disappointing 2006/07 season hit Bingham's hopes of a high ranking spot as positions are worked out over two years.
He picked up only 9,850 points in that campaign but a massive 14,775 in the season just completed, with only 14 players bettering that tally.
"I'm confident I can make the breakthrough," Bingham added. "I'm reasonably happy with my break-building but feel that I need to improve my safety game and tactics."
Like many in the game, Bingham is saddened to hear of the demise of yet another venue to play the sport locally with the closure of the Victoria Snooker Centre in Southchurch Road, Southend.
It marks the end of a 58-year association with the sport in the town for the Phillips family.
Alec Phillips opened the original Victoria Billiards Club in Alexander Street in 1950.
He died eight years later, but his son Roy carried on the tradition with premises above WH Smith's in the High Street from 1982-93 and the current home in Southchurch Road since 2000.
Roy has sold out and admits the premises will no longer cater for snooker fans whatever the future use.
It will leave the Pockets Club in Lucy Road as the only snooker club in the main town and Bingham admits: "The days of the real snooker boom in England in the 1980s have long since gone.
"People generally only take an interest in the sport over here during the fortnight of the world championships and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that taking place in the Far East in a few years time. They're mad on snooker there.
"It's also very popular in other parts of Europe such as Germany, but back home we're a bit like tennis and the attitude to the Wimbledon Championships with the general public - they think we only play for a fortnight a year."
Bingham plays in the spring festival at Pontin's Prestatyn this weekend and flies out to Thailand in July for a six reds event.
And Roy Phillips will not be lost to the sport as, at the age of 67, he is off to Kent to help son Andrew run the family's remaining snooker club in Tunbridge Wells.
The Southchurch Road club closes tomorrow and those with cues at the premises are asked to remove them as soon as possible.
1:00pm Thursday 8th May 2008
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