Ladies snooker star Reanne Evans awarded World Championship qualifying spot
Tuesday 3 March 2015 15:42, UK
Top ladies trailblazer Reanne Evans has been awarded a place in the qualifying rounds of this year's World Championship.
Evans, who has won the World Ladies Championship for the past ten consecutive years, will head to Sheffield's Ponds Forge in April in a bid to qualify for the main event at the Crucible in the same city.
The 29-year-old from Dudley in the West Midlands will be one of 128 players to bid to join the game's top 16 in the tournament and she will need to win three matches in order to do so.
She would become the first woman to compete in the World Championship if successful, having become the first woman to qualify for any ranking event last season when she got through to the main draw of the Wuxi Classic in China - eventually bowing out to China's Zhu Yinghui.
A new infrastructure introduced by the sport's governing body means that all players seeded outside the top 16 will join the 128, while invitations have been extended to former world champions no longer on the tour and amateur players.
As such, Evans has been invited to qualify, as have former champions Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis, while James Wattana has also been invited.
"So please (sic) to finally be able to say I've been given a place in this years world championship!!! 3 wins and I'll be at the crucible!!! Thanks to all my fans and sponsors," Evans, a long-time campaigner for the women's game to be given greater prominence, wrote on her Facebook page.
Were Evans to win even one of her qualifying matches it would carry prize money of £6,000 - a fee comfortably in excess of the tariff on offer for winning the women's World Championship.
