Judd Trump will head to next week’s Northern Ireland Open at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast as its defending champion.
The Englishman won the title for a record fourth time in 2023, raising aloft the Alex Higgins Trophy after completing a 9-3 triumph over Chris Wakelin in the final.
It was the end of October, and Trump had just completed a rare hat-trick of consecutive ranking event victories – a feat only four players had accomplished previously.
The Northern Ireland Open glory followed earlier wins that month in the English Open and the Wuhan Open.
Fast forward about 12 months, and the 35 year-old has mostly sustained that incredibly high level of performance on the World Snooker Tour.
In fact, Trump has represented an almost constant presence at the business end of competitions since then.
During 2024, the Bristol potter has added four more pieces of silverware to his ever-growing collection.
The German Masters and World Open crowns were won in the second half of last season, and two additional titles have been captured in this campaign already.
Trump won the prestigious Shanghai Masters invitational in China before emerging triumphantly at the inaugural Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters, where he pocketed a record-equalling prize of £500,000.
That jackpot helped him consolidate his return to the number one position in the world rankings for the first time since 2021.
But such has been his consistency that even without that half-million pound cheque from Riyadh, Trump would still boast the status of top dog in the sport on the official two-year standings.
In the 2024 calendar year, he has reached the quarter-finals or better of every single event he has participated in.
That equates to four titles, two further appearances in finals, two semi-finals, and six quarter-finals – an incredible run of form in anybody’s book.
That’s not to forget his amazing achievement of reaching 1,000 career century breaks at the recent British Open, becoming only the third player in history to do so.
Yet is Judd Trump receiving enough plaudits for his recent achievements at the very top of the game?
A popular argument against Trump’s record is that he doesn’t perform strongly enough at the biggest tournaments, and by biggest, his naysayers generally mean the Triple Crown tournaments.
There’s some weight to that, because a career return of four Triple Crown titles – including just one World Championship crown – is probably below par for what his tremendous talent merits.
There is no getting away from the fact that his quarter-final exit at the Crucible Theatre to Jak Jones in April was disappointing, to put it politely.
But Trump himself admits that he puts quantity over quality when it comes to the silverware he can attain across his career.
And like he has said in the past, his ability to win newly established tournaments – ones that maybe haven’t had the chance yet to garner prestige but will in the future – has been stellar.
That was highlighted again when he pipped Mark Williams to glory in Saudi Arabia last month, the country’s first-ever ranking event.
Judd Trump
October 2023 – October 2024
Champion: x7
(2023 English Open; 2023 Wuhan Open; 2023 Northern Ireland Open; 2024 German Masters; 2024 World Open; 2024 Shanghai Masters; 2024 Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters)
Runner-up: x3
(2023 Champion of Champions; 2024 World Grand Prix; 2024 Xi’an Grand Prix)
Semi-Finals: x3
(2023 UK Championship; 2024 World Masters of Snooker; 2024 Wuhan Open)
Quarter-Finals: x6
(2024 Masters; 2024 Players Championship; 2024 Tour Championship; 2024 World Championship; 2024 English Open; 2024 British Open)
L32: x1
(2023 International Championship)
L64: x1
(2023 Scottish Open)
There are people who argue that Judd Trump needs to win another World Championship and more Triple Crown events to be considered a legend of the sport, an all-time great.
In fact, there are entire Reddit threads and online articles dedicated to this idea that is, well, absolute nonsense.
Trump is already a legend of the sport, and he has most of the stats to back that up, with time still on his side to get it right more often in the so-called majors as well.
The Class of 1992 – rightly – receives constant praise for their achievements in the game, but it’s worth noting that we are also in the process of watching another career that will go down in history as one of the sport’s finest.
Not only in the last year but generally since around his 2018 triumph at the Northern Ireland Open, Trump has been a ruthless winning machine – taking his ranking event tally from eight to 29 in that six-year period.
That same tournament is coming up next week on the 2024/25 schedule, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the name Judd Trump etched onto the trophy yet again.
A player born to entertain, we should enjoy his outstanding play and marvel at his success while we can.
Featured photo credit: WST
