McGill wins the 2017 Shoot Out

Anthony McGill beat China's Xiao Guodong to win the 2017 Coral Shoot Out tournament and get his second ranking title after conquering the Indian Open back in 2016.

This is actually the first year that the Shoot Out is considered to be a ranking event, which made a lot of eyebrows raise, but no-one can write off the fact that is a pretty interesting test of endurance for the snooker players that are accustomed to perfect silence and no shot-clock.

McGill had a long way to reach the final, having to face the likes of Oliver Lines, Jamie Curtis-Barrett, Mark King, Jack Lisowski, Anthony Hamilton and Shaun Murphy, all these encounters being equally difficult.

Not to mention the final, Xiao Guodong being one of China's most proficient snooker players in action at the present time. Plus, the man is no stranger from reaching the Shoot Out final, back in 2015 sadly losing to Michael White.

As expected, the final started with a few safety shots until McGill took on a long red and knock it off the table, this leaving his opponent with ball-in-hand and a lot of possibilities.


But Xiao didn't make the most of this chance, soon losing position on 15 and leaving a red down the right pocket after a safety shots exchange.

This time though, McGill went full blood and potted one ball after another, a break of 67 sealing his much-deserved victory.

Although extremely happy to have one more trophy added to his collection and cash the £32,000 prize money, Anthony couldn't but openly state that: "Don't get me wrong, I am over the moon, but this shouldn't be a ranking event. It's not even snooker rules."

Not much to disagree with the lad there, so hopefully things will change in the future.

Much to my delight though, we have some real tournaments coming our way, like the Gibraltar Open which runs from 3-5 March.