Neil Robertson has won the 2022 Players Championship, beating Barry Hawkins by 10-5 in the Final. This brings Neil’s tally of ranking titles to 22, on par with Judd Trump. Despite still feeling a bit tired from covid, and not being at his very best, Neil played well all tournament considering how tough the conditions proved to be.

The tournament, which featured only the top 16 in the one-year ranking list, was played in Wolverhampton from 7 to 13 February 2022.
Only Neil and Judd Trump represented the Grove in this event. Judd was beaten by Ronnie O’Sullivan, 6-3, in the first round, only for Neil to beat Ronnie by the same score in the quarter-finals.

Here is what Neil had to say after his win in the final, as reported by WST:

“I’m over the moon. I didn’t expect too much coming here, as I’d just come out of Covid-19 isolation four or five days before the event,” said 40-year-old Robertson.

“I didn’t produce my best snooker getting to the final. I was playing really well in the big moments and had hard fought wins. The way I came out and played today was my best snooker. Barry showed tremendous character to close it to 5-3 and 7-5. I found something once again to close it out.

“When you add in the couple of Masters and Champion of Champions wins to the 22 ranking titles, it makes me really proud. John Higgins has said this is the hardest era there has ever been in snooker. You have the Class of 92 and then myself, Selby, Trump, Murphy and all of the young Chinese players like Bingtao and Xintong. It has an unbelievable mix to the tour of experience and freshness to keep everyone on their toes.

“I noticed earlier in the week that I had lost in the final of this event a few times. It is nice to win it. This is like the Masters, in that is a top 16 event, but this is harder to get to in a way. It is only the top 16 on the one-year list and there are some tremendous players not here this week. It rewards the most in form players and every match you will play is against someone full of confidence.”

All detailed results are available on snooker.org.