The 2022 World Women's Snooker Championship was a women's

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 ...

tournament that took place at the Ding Junhui Snooker Academy in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

, England from 11 to 14 February 2022. It was the first staging of the

World Women's Snooker Championship The World Women's Snooker Championship (known as the Women's World Open from 1976 Women's World Open (snooker), 1976 to 1981 Women's World Open (snooker), 1981 and the World Ladies Snooker Championship from 1983 Women's World Snooker Championsh ...

since

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

, following an 18-month suspension of the World Women's Snooker Tour between March 2020 and August 2021, due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. In addition to receiving the newly renamed

Mandy Fisher Mandy Fisher (born in April 1962) is an English former professional snooker player and a World Women's Snooker Championship winner in 1984. Fisher founded the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association (now known as World Women's Snooker) ...

Trophy, the winner of the tournament earned 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, ...

from the start of the

2022–23 snooker season The 2022–23 snooker season was a series of snooker tournaments played from June 2022 to May 2023. Players The World Snooker Tour in the 2022–23 season initially consisted of a field of 131 professional players, but later dropped to 130 w ...

Reanne Evans Reanne Evans (born 25 October 1985) is an English professional snooker player and regular pundit on televised snooker broadcasts. Widely recognised as the most successful female player in the sport's history, she has won the World Women's Sno ...

was the defending champion, having defeated Nutcharut Wongharuthai 6–3 in the 2019 final to win her 12th women's world title. However, Evans lost 1–4 to Wendy Jans in the quarter-finals, the first time in her career that she had not reached the semi-finals of the tournament. Three-time champion

Ng On-yee Ng On-yee (; born 17 November 1990) is a Hong Kong professional snooker player who has won three IBSF World Snooker Championships and three World Women's Snooker Championship, World Women's Snooker world championships. She held the number one ...

came from 0–3 behind in her quarter-final against Wongharuthai to force a deciding frame, but Wongharuthai won the match 4–3 on the final black. The quarter-final losses by Evans and Ng meant that no former champion reached the semi-finals. Wongharuthai won the tournament, defeating Wendy Jans 6–5 in the final. She became the first Thai player to win the women's world title, the 13th different winner of the tournament since its inception in 1976, the first new champion since 2015, and the only player besides Evans or Ng to win the title in 19 years. She gained a two-year professional tour card, allowing her to join the

from the beginning of the following season. Upon her return to Thailand, she was granted an audience with the country's prime minister Prayut Chan o-cha, and its Minister for Tourism and Sports

Pipat Ratchakitprakarn Phipat Ratchakitprakarn (; born 5 August 1955) is a Thai politician. He served as Minister of Tourism and Sports in the second cabinet of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and Minister of Labour in the Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin and Paetong ...

Prize fund

The breakdown of prize money for the event is shown below: * Winner: £6,000 * Runner-up: £2,500 * Semi-final: £1,250 * Quarter-final: £600 * Last 16: £300 * Preliminary Round : £150 * Highest break: £200 * Total: £17,200

Final summary

Nutcharut Wongharuthai at the 2020 Snooker Shoot Out

The final, contested as the best of 11 frames between Thai player Nutcharut Wongharuthai and Belgian player Wendy Jans, lasted five hours and 40 minutes. Although Wongharuthai took an initial 2–1 lead, Jans then won four of the next five frames to lead 5–3, also contributing the final's highest break of 84 in the fourth frame. Wongharuthai later stated: "When I was 5–3 behind I thought that I had lost, and I really just started to play for fun because I was too tense. Luckily, it worked." Wongharuthai won the next two frames to level the scores at 5–5. Requiring a snooker in the decider with only the colours remaining, Jans potted the yellow and green before obtaining four foul points when Wongharuthai failed to escape from a snooker on the brown. Jans then potted the brown, blue, and pink, but missed a long black into the yellow pocket, leaving it over the middle. Wongharuthai potted the black to clinch the title.

Results

Main draw

''Players listed in bold indicate match winners.''

Final

''Source: WPBSA Tournament Manager.''

References

{{World championships in 2022 World Women's Snooker Championship

Women's A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional uteruses ...

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 ...

International sports competitions hosted by England Sports competitions in Sheffield