Woking in a winter wonderland

The 20-year-old from Marchwood emerged victorious from a 33-strong field at Woking Snooker Centre just 15 days after his fairytale of Sofia ended in quarter-final defeat in the IBSF World Championship.

Castle, who had four 147s in practice routines in the week leading up to Woking, froze out Sean Halligan (London) in the final to collect £265.

Tournament director Terry Teeman declared: “Billy was on fire. What a player he is when he’s firing on all cylinders. When he’s on it – he’s unstoppable.”

Castle – who prepared for matches in Bulgaria by listening to Christmas songs, especially Fairytale of New York – accounted for Mike Coudray (Woking) 3-2 from 2-0 down in the semi-finals. And the Cuestars South of England Championship Tour rankings leader wrapped up the five-frame thriller with an 88 break.

Halligan, who has been out of the game for a few years, produced some great snooker in the bottom half of the draw although Mark Leonard and Daniel Knox gave him a run for his money.

Among the quality field were Marianne Williams, from Smallfield, and Woking’s Jasmine Bolsover, a day after her 13th birthday, who both compete on the World Ladies Billiards & Snooker Association circuit.

No professionals attended the Surrey Open, which clashed with a Players Tour Championship leg in Scotland.

Following the final, Teeman, who was hoping for at least 64 players, launched an attack on the professional game’s ruling body.

Teeman, not a merry gentleman, said: “It is a shame that the top of the sport, and in particular the WPBSA (World Professional Billiards & Snooker Association) and World Snooker, ignored our attempts to get them to give us a little publicity.

“Perhaps instead of just talking about how they support grass-roots snooker they actually did support grass-roots snooker, events like this one may draw more pros and thus more prize money.”

World Snooker told cuestars.uk.com it is not their policy to promote events they haven’t sanctioned but they are happy to publish reports on their website, worldsnooker.com. And it insists it does support the grass-roots game.

“World Snooker and the WPBSA do a lot to assist snooker at grass-roots level,” said a spokesman. “For example, we provide free coaching for all in the CueZone area of our major tournaments, we support the Paul Hunter Foundation which offers the chance to play snooker to young people and we have built a network of coaching structures in the UK and overseas to help ensure that there are talented young players coming through.

“Regarding the Surrey Open event, we re-tweeted several promotional messages about it to 21,000 followers on Twitter.”