Calendar is out!

And there's a lot to break down in it, so let's jump straight in.

The big one is the long rumoured additional major has been called in - there's no specifics about the European Open, as it's called, other than it'll be in Salzburg the week after the World Cup. Now if this is just a replication of the UK Open, it should be pretty cool. But I guess the proof will be in the pudding, and we'll wait and see what the actual gig is.

The next thing to note is that the European Championship is now over six days, rather than the current four. You've got to assume that it'll be a longer format as a result, the additional two days looking incredibly natural to expand things to 48 players, but again, no specifics yet. If that is what it is and ends up being a pretty simple 1-16 get a bye and 17-48 face off in round one, in other words exactly like a Euro Tour except on steroids, that should be good.

The Premier League has once again snubbed the south west of England, with the nearest place being Cardiff. It's something that happened last year but I didn't really notice, but that seems a little bit harsh. They've had Exeter before as a natural lead in to the UK Open, why they need both of Birmingham and Nottingham, or all of Liverpool/Manchester/Sheffield/Leeds, is a wee bit odd, but whatever.

Euro Tour in France. OK then. I have no idea whether it will sell well, but it's a bit of an open question as to how strong the players there will be. Barring some sort of miracle late season Pro Tour run, Tricole is losing his card (and even if he sneaks into the worlds, he might lose it anyway). Labre has fallen off a cliff. Thuillier who we saw at the World Cup seems better than Labre at this stage. They've got a few who've played some of the Challenge Tour but nobody who looks that close to breaking an eighty average. There's someone called Damien Decla who isn't doing horribly on the Development Tour, but still is clearly a work in progress. So somewhat of a mixed bag. I doubt it'd be any worse than the ones in much of Eastern Europe. Weekend in Krakow is tempting!

The Development and Challenge Tours have been cut to 18 events a piece from 24, and are now running at just one per day over six weekends. I think this makes a lot of sense, assuming that the prize money per tournament increases to compensate, even if the overall amount pumped into each tour stays the same.

World Youth Championship clashes with the final day of the Grand Prix. One has to assume they think Littler isn't going to enter it?

Expect something for the Grand Prix on Sunday. It'll likely just be an attempt at projections, the model I have doesn't have anything that can really adjust to the double in start, nor does it have any standard option to look at how a best of three sets match will go, so the first round will likely be pretty rough.