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Opinion | Covid scare, no food, masks but tears of joy: what snooker Masters tells us before Hong Kong Sevens
- Hong Kong Masters proceeds in front of record-breaking audiences, though with eating outsourced to McDonald’s
- Its handling of Zhao Xintong’s Covid-19 infection differed from the approach that turned the city’s recent badminton championships into a farce
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Why you can trust SCMP
Seven absorbing sessions, more than 20,000 spectators in total, one 147, a rather high-profile Covid-19 case and zero calories: the numbers tell a story of the Hong Kong Masters, for good or, in the case of Zhao Xintong, ill.
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It is a story of interest to Covid-watchers, China-dwellers and Hong Kong Sevens ticket holders, because the Masters was a staging post, a step forward for sport in the city, and one embraced by a snooker-mad and event-starved public.
There was a wobble, with the withdrawal of Zhao after he tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival. But the first major international sporting occasion here in three years showed what can be achieved, and what remains to be done.
The sight of local snooker officials shedding tears of joy backstage in the moments after Marco Fu Ka-chun’s 147 break on Saturday was one of vindication and relief. By the end, the event looked like the million dollars it was stumping up to the winner.
Money-spinner, but no dinner
Although the ticket receipts from the record attendance should make pleasing reading, the venue reflected Hong Kong’s limitations as a host, too: thousands of masked-up people who under Covid regulations were not allowed to eat or drink.
The recommendation was to pop down the road to McDonald’s, where queues of 50 or more orders showed the folly of trying to feed a small stadium at a railway station kiosk – a situation that at the Sevens will be left to Deliveroo and Foodpanda.
Amid no little noise made about reviving the economy, it limited the potential takings for local vendors as well as snooker in Hong Kong, which is set to lose half of its public funding in April.
A case for easing Covid rules?
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