Snooker’s leading female player, Reanne Evans, has been handed a wild card for this year’s world championship in Sheffield.
The women’s world champion for each of the past 10 years has been awarded a place in the qualifying rounds for the 2015 Crucible tournament, World Snooker has announced. If she wins three matches, the 29-year-old from Dudley will be through to the first round of the biggest event on the snooker calendar.
“This is fantastic news, it’s a no-brainer for me,” Evans told the Press Association. “This is going to be such good publicity and I am thrilled. The money on offer for just one win is far more than I’ve got in the last five or six years, and that’s just one game.
“This is a dream for me and you never know. I can just give it my best shot. I’m taking nothing for granted, but I will be doing my best.
“This is all new to us and it is good for the ladies to have the opportunity. We want the ladies to improve but I like playing the men, it’s a challenge for me.”
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association’s chairman, Jason Ferguson, said: “She deserves the chance to play in the world championship and she will be aiming to become the first woman ever to play in the main event at the Crucible. Reanne is a trail-blazer for female players around the world.”
Evans last season became the first woman to compete in the final stages of a world ranking event. She beat Thepchaiya Un-Nooh to qualify for the Wuxi Classic in China, where she lost to Zhu Yinghui.
The award of a world championship place to Evans follows a change in structure to the qualifying rounds of the tournament. All players seeded outside the top 16 will start in the same round, with a total of 128 players competing in the qualifiers. This has opened up extra places, which will be given to any former world champions who wish to enter, plus leading amateur players at the discretion of snooker’s governing body, the WPBSA.
Ferguson added: “Reanne’s achievements in the ladies game are incredible – to win 10 world titles in a row in any sport is a phenomenal record. She is a true sporting great and proved her ability to compete on the open professional tour when she reached the final stages of the Wuxi Classic in China.
“The WPBSA has successfully developed several initiatives to get more women involved in snooker. At grass roots level, our Cue Zone Into Schools programme has been rolled out to 36 schools across England, encouraging girls and boys to play the sport.
Mandy Fisher, the chair of World Ladies Snooker, added: “I’m very pleased to see Reanne given the chance to play in the World Championship, she is an outstanding player and worthy of the opportunity.”