Evans refuses pre-match handshake with AllenAllen eventually wins tightly fought first-round encounter 3-2Any notion that the most extraordinary grudge match in snooker history would fail to live up to the pre-game billing was dispelled before a ball had even been potted. Snooker has had its fair share of eagerly anticipated showdowns in recent times but none have had a backdrop and subplot quite like this one. In the end, the match delivered just as much as the drama did.
![Reanne Evans snubs ex-partner Mark Allen before British Open grudge match](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c4a3e7b10883e1172d9e7724498fce9f205113d5/0_423_4252_2552/master/4252.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=8faa37496b5e7b30135180e2f71c12c1)
How Barry Hearn, snooker’s grand supremo and lover of any off-baize action that generates publicity, must have grinned when Reanne Evans refused Mark Allen’s offer of a handshake before the break-off in their first-round match at the
British Open in Leicester. There is, of course, way more to this story than ranking points, prize money or head-to-head meetings on the table but even that lit the touch-paper in a way nobody could have imagined.