Provisional 1999/2000 Embassy World Rankings

John Higgins starts the season with a 6,730 points lead over Ronnie O'Sullivan, with Stephen Hendry provisionally third.

Jimmy White, following his heroics at Sheffield will start from ninth. Matthew Stevens, 1/4 finalist on his Crucible debut moves up to 13th and his near neighbour Dominic Dale will be 14th. Steven's stablemate Paul Hunter starts at 15th.

To accommodate the "high fliers" some players are sliding down the slippery pole in the wrong direction.

Steve Davis slips to provisional 17. Thailand hero James Wattana is at 22 and Canadian Alain Robidoux, who endured a nightmare season plummets to 48th.

Welshman Darren Morgan has slipped to 25th and whether he can recover his former Top 8 position will depend, to a great extent on how well he recovers from an horrendous car smash in July, which left him in hospital with a dislocated hip.

Some other familier faces bowing to the inevitable march of time include Dennis Taylor down to 84, Willie Thorne at 81, Dean Reynolds down to 65 and 1986 World Champ Joe Johnson drops to 67.

World Ladies Number One - Karen Corr shows up at a provisional 166, up from a start position of 336.

Some of last season's success stories have made an impact: Martin Dziewialtowski is up to 59th. Marcus Campbell jumps to 44. Alfied Burden comes into the top 64 at 51, as does Matthew Couch at 60.

The growth in quality overseas players shows clearly with Aussie Quientan Hann up to 31. Björn Haneveer moves up 59 places to 100. Marco Fu the World Amateur Champions vaults to a provisional 106 from his start of 377. Belgium's Mario Geudens is up to 137 from 200 and Mario Wehrmann moves to 159 from 236.