Leicester’s son dedicates 18-14 victory over Ronnie
O’Sullivan to late father.
It was a superb display of match play from Mark Selby to defeat the two time defending champion O’Sullivan. With only one frame winning break on the opening day of the final it was an amazing achievement to only trail 10-7. Winning the final two frames of Sunday night’s session to close to 10-7 was crucial, it kept Mark in contention and he knew he couldn’t play any worse.
Refreshed on Monday he raced out of the blocks winning all
four frames, razor tight match play prevented O’Sullivan from being able to
create any chances. They shared the following two frames, both missing several
opportunities/frame balls, however most surprising was O’Sullivan’s miss on the
pink in the final frame. Only needing to pot a sitter of a pink into the middle
pocket, he tried to power it in and get on the black, subsequently missing and
leaving it on for Mark. It showed that the afternoon of excellent match play
had left O’Sullivan a little jaded. Mark potted the pink and a tough black to
win the frame and lead 12-11 going into the evening session.
An interesting intro by the BBC in the evening, depicting
the Crucible as a Gladiator’s arena while using the score from Batman instead
of Russell Crowe’s Gladiator. We then had a line of World Champions next to the
table, all very nice except someone should have brought a dinner jacket for Joe
Johnson.
The evening session was much the same as the afternoon, O’Sullivan
starting with an impressive large break but then not being able to create
opportunities. Selby’s safety throughout was excellent and his long potting
consistent, although he wasn’t winning a lot of frames in one visit I don’t
remember him missing once in the balls. Therefore he was able to always play a
good safety shot if he missed and left no easy chances for Ronnie.
Unlike previous first time champions I was quite confident
that Mark would have no problem getting over the line & I was correct as he
sprinted over it. The break in the final frame was a man full of confidence,
ready to grab his opportunity. In winning he picked up the biggest cheque in
snooker history, a cool £300,000, catapulting him to the top of the new Snooker
Money list - looking at the new money list I think the Worlds has too much of a
gap over other ranking events, Ding who won five events and isn’t even in the
top two on the new ranking system.
Overall it was a good
tournament and much more enjoyable than the previous two. I enjoyed my visit
for the quarter finals and have already booked my tickets for next year’s
quarters at the time of writing this. The best player won and the overall
standard was better than in the previous two years.
I will have a piece about my 2014 visit up in the next few
days and we are only a few weeks away from the start of next season.
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