Pink Ribbon Tournament 2011 - Mark Joyce takes trophy

Mark Joyce, the 2011 Pink Ribbon champion

The pinkiest competition from the snooker calendar ended yesterday evening with the splendid victory of Mark Joyce. He won 4-0 over the ex-defending champion, Michael Holt, in order to conquer a beautiful pink trophy and cash the £2,400 money prize.


The quarter-finals saw two intense battles, the one between Martin Gould and Michael White and the one given between Sam Harvey and Jimmy Robertson. Both matches ended on a decider, the winners being White and Harvey.
However the other two matches didn’t take that long for Mark Joyce had no problem whatsoever to defeat the current world champion, John Higgins 4-2, while Michael Holt whitewashed Ryan Day 4-0. It’s true that Higgins didn’t play his high standard snooker, but this doesn’t make Joyce victory any less valuable or genuine. ;-)


The semis followed shortly and the patter was almost the same. While the first match, the one between Michael White and Mark Joyce, ended on a 4-1 victory for Mark, the one between Jimmy Robertson and Michael Holt saw all its frames being consumed. It was a real feast of over half century breaks from both players, but in the end Holt succeeded to book himself a place into the final with a 4-3 result.


And here we were the last frontier - the final. Not much to do, but to keep on playing. Amazingly or not, Joyce won the last match with only two major breaks (64, 73) to set the final scoreline at 4-0 and lift that pink trophy at the end of the evening. 

The two finalists and Peter`s basket of goodies :-)

It is indeed a great victory for Joyce, as his performance was top class from the beginning of the tournament, until the end of it. However, I can’t overlook Michael Holt’s evolution, for the Englishman made the best he could to defend his title. He almost managed it and that shows you what a terrific and determined player he is. :-)
This spectacular victory puts an end to five fabulous days of snooker. With pink balloons, pink mini-vans and the love for snooker being felt in every corner of the South West Snooker Academy, the time has come to get ready for a new competition. Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you don’t know that they will hold the Players Tour Championship Event 2 here in July ;-)

My sincere congratulations to Mr. Paul Mount, to his lovely daughter Sarah, to Janie Watkins and to all the people that made this year’s Pink Ribbon tournament a truly great and special one. Also my deepest thanks to Monique Limbos for those lovely photos that she took during the whole event and for letting me use them :-)


Here`s for another 100 Pink Ribbon tournaments to come! :-))