The 2017 Q School was a series of two

snooker Snooker (pronounced , ) is a cue sport played on a rectangular Billiard table#Snooker and English billiards tables, billiards table covered with a green cloth called baize, with six Billiard table#Pockets 2, pockets: one at each corner and ...

tournaments held at the start of the

2017–18 snooker season The 2017–18 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 4 May 2017 and 7 May 2018. The season began with the pro–am Vienna Snooker Open in May 2017 and ended with the 2018 World Snooker ...

. An event for amateur players, it served as a qualification event for a place on the professional

World Snooker Tour The World Snooker Tour (WST) is the main professional snooker tour, consisting of about 128 players competing on a circuit of up to 28 tournaments each season. It is administered by World Snooker Ltd, the commercial arm of professional snooker, ...

for the following two seasons. The events took place in May 2017 at the

Guild Hall A guildhall, also known as a guild hall or guild house, is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Europe, with many surviving today in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commo ...

Preston, Lancashire Preston () is a city on the north bank of the River Ribble in Lancashire, England. The city is the administrative centre of the county of Lancashire and the wider City of Preston, Lancashire, City of Preston local government district. Preston ...

, England with a total 12 players qualifying via the two tournaments and the Order of Merit.

Format

The 2017 Q School consisted of two events. The two events had 206 entries competing for 12 places on the main tour, four players qualifying from each of the two events, with a further four places available from the Q Tour Order of Merit.. All matches were the best of seven frames.

Event 1

The first 2017 Q School event was held from 9 to 14 May 2017 at the

in Preston, England.

Lukas Kleckers Lukas Kleckers (born 18 May 1996 in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German former professional snooker player. Career Kleckers first drew attention in 2013 when, at the age of 17, he captured the highest ranking and most prestigious amateur ...

, Allan Taylor,

Billy Joe Castle Billy Joe Castle (born 14 July 1992 in Marchwood, Hampshire) is an English professional snooker player. Career Castle came through the 2017 Q School by winning six matches to earn a two-year card on the World Snooker Tour for the 2017–18 a ...

and

Ashley Hugill Ashley Hugill (born 28 September 1994 in York, Yorkshire) is an English former professional snooker player. Career Hugill came through the 2017 Q School by winning six matches to earn a two-year card on the World Snooker Tour for the 2017– ...

qualified. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–1 * 4–0 * 4–2 * 4–2

Event 2

The second 2017 Q School event was held from 15 to 20 May 2017 at the

in Preston, England.

Duane Jones Duane Lionel Jones (April 11, 1937July 22, 1988) was an American actor. He was best known for his lead role as Ben in the 1968 horror film ''Night of the Living Dead''. He was later director of the Maguire Theater at the State University of New ...

Sanderson Lam Sanderson Lam () (born 28 January 1994) is an English professional snooker player. Early life Lam was born to Chinese parents in Leeds, England. His parents moved to England in the 1980s. Career In 2011, Lam started to take part in the Players ...

Paul Davison Paul S. Davison (born 1 October 1971) is an English former professional snooker player from Pickering, North Yorkshire. First earning a place on the World Snooker Tour in 1992, he played on the tour until 1997, and has since regained his place o ...

and

Chen Zifan Chen Zifan (; born 17 September 1995) is a Chinese professional snooker player who, in 2023, received a five-year ban from professional competition after committing match-fixing offences. In December 2022, Chen was suspended from the professio ...

qualified. The results of the four final matches are given below. * 4–2 * 4–2 * 4–2 * 4–1

Q School Order of Merit

A Q School Order of Merit was produced for players who didn't qualify automatically from the two events. Four places on the main tour were given to the leading four players in the Order of Merit, Zhang Yong, Sean O'Sullivan,

Joe Swail Joe Swail (born 29 August 1969) is a Northern Irish former professional snooker player from Belfast. He retired in May 2019 after being relegated from the tour. He has reached ten major ranking semi-finals, including the 2000 and 2001 World Cham ...

and

Martin O'Donnell Martin O'Donnell (born May 1, 1955) is an American composer, audio director, and sound designer best known for his work on video game developer Bungie's titles, such as the ''Myth'' series, ''Oni'', the ''Halo'' series, and ''Destiny''. O'Don ...

. The Order of Merit was also used to top up fields for the

where an event failed to attract the required number of entries. The rankings in the Order of Merit were based on the number of frames won in the two Q School events. Players who received a bye into the second round were awarded four points for round one. Where players were equal, those who won the most frames in the first event were ranked higher. The leading players in the Q School Order of Merit are given below, those with Q in brackets were awarded places on the main tour.

Two-season performance of qualifiers

The following table shows the rankings of the 12 qualifiers from the 2017 Q School, at the end of the

2018–19 snooker season The 2018–19 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 10 May 2018 and 23 June 2019. The season was made up of ranking tournaments, non-ranking tournaments and variant tournaments. In tota ...

, the end of their two guaranteed seasons on the tour, together with their tour status for the

2019–20 snooker season The 2019–20 snooker season was a series of professional snooker tournaments played between 9 May 2019 and 22 August 2020. In total, 47 events were held during the season: however, the ending of the season was highly disrupted by the ...

. Players in the top-64 of the rankings retained their place on the tour while those outside the top-64 lost their place unless they qualified under a different category.

References

{{2017–18 snooker season Q School (snooker) 2016 in English sport 2017 in snooker Sport in Preston