The 2021 UK Championship (officially the 2021 Cazoo UK Championship) was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 23 November to 5 December 2021 at the York Barbican, in York, England. The event was the first Triple Crown and fifth ranking event of the 2021–22 snooker season. The tournament featured a prize fund of £1,009,000, with the winner receiving £200,000. It was sponsored by car retail company Cazoo and broadcast in the UK by the BBC and Eurosport.
Neil Robertson was the defending champion, having defeated Judd Trump 10–9 in the 2020 final, but he lost 2–6 in the first round to amateur John Astley. Many other top seeds exited the tournament in the early rounds, with 11 of the world's top 13 ranked players eliminated before the last-16 stage. For the first time in the tournament's history, no top-16 player reached the final, which was contested between China's Zhao Xintong and Belgium's Luca Brecel, both of whom made their first appearances in a Triple Crown final. Zhao won the event with a 10–5 victory in the final to claim his first ranking title. The event featured 119 century breaks, with Gary Wilson making the highest, his fourth career maximum break, in his first-round match against Ian Burns.
Aged 24, Zhao became the youngest winner of the UK Championship since Trump in 2011. He became the fourth non-British winner in the tournament's history, after Ireland's Patsy Fagan, China's Ding Junhui, and Australia's Robertson. He also became the fourth player from mainland China to win a ranking title, after Ding, Liang Wenbo and Yan Bingtao. His win enabled him to enter the top 16 for the first time and secure a place in the second Triple Crown event of the season, the 2022 Masters.
Overview
The 2021 UK Championship was a professional snooker tournament that took place from 23 November to 5 December 2021 at the York Barbican, in York, England. The UK Championship was first held in 1977 as the United Kingdom Professional Snooker Championship, open to British residents only. At the 1984 event, it became a ranking tournament open to players of any nationality, which it has remained ever since. The event was the first Triple Crown tournament, and the fifth ranking event of the 2021–22 snooker season. There were 128 participants, 119 players from the World Snooker Tour, and 9 invited amateur players.
The defending champion was Neil Robertson, who defeated Judd Trump 10–9 in the previous year's final. The tournament was broadcast live in the United Kingdom by BBC Sport, and shown on Eurosport in Europe. Worldwide, the event was covered by China Central Television and Superstars Online in China, and by Sky Sport in New Zealand. It was simulcast in Hong Kong by Now TV; DAZN covered the event across Canada, Brazil and the United States. It was sponsored by vehicle rental company Cazoo.
Prize fund
The breakdown of prize money for the event is shown below:
Winner: £200,000
Runner-up: £80,000
Semi-final: £40,000
Quarter-final: £24,500
Last 16: £17,000
Last 32: £12,000
Last 64: £6,500
Highest : £15,000
Total: £1,009,000
Summary
All matches other than the final were held as the best-of-11 frames. In the first round, defending champion Neil Robertson lost 2–6 to amateur player John Astley, but later revealed that he had been diagnosed with pulsatile tinnitus and would have withdrawn from the tournament regardless. Shaun Murphy, the sixth seed, lost 5–6 to another amateur player Si Jiahui, and made comments afterward on BBC Radio 5 Live suggesting that amateur players should not be permitted to compete in professional events. Robertson, Mark Williams and Mark Selby agreed with Murphy's comments, although the World Snooker Tour stated that giving amateurs the opportunity to compete in professional tournaments was a vital aspect of their development, and its chairman Steve Dawson stated that the drama caused by amateur players beating elite professionals had been "great for the sport". Critics on social media noted the irony that Murphy himself had attempted to qualify for golf's 2019 Open Championship as an amateur competitor. Thepchaiya Un-Nooh compiled five century breaks while defeating Stephen Hendry 6–1 in the first round, becoming only the fourth player after Fergal O'Brien, Trump, and Matthew Selt to make that many in a best-of-11 match.