Welsh Open 2023

Review

13-19 February 2023

From Day one in Llandudno we got a feeling that this would be a tournament that the big guns would dominate as we seen O'Sullivan, Robertson, Higgins, Trump & Allen among others progress with minimum fuss.

This however was far from how the tournament played out and it wasn't long before top seeds began to exit the tournament, It was Day 2 of the event when Robertson, Williams & Ding Junhui were all sent home following 1st round losses.

It was the last 32 when the tournament really began to take shape, there were notable wins for Daniel Wells (V Trump), Robert Milkins (V Selby) & Tian Pengfei (V Carter), this meant sections of the draw began to open up and players such as Robbie Williams, Jak Jones & Yuan Sijun could sense there was an opportunity to progress further in a ranking event.

With world number 1 Ronnie O'Sullivan having tip problems all week, it was hard to predict if/when they would eventually halt is progression in the tournament but he progressed to the quarter final with ease as he defeated Belgian youngster Ben Mertens.

Quarter finals produced two whitewashes as Shaun Murphy (V Sijun) & Tian Pengfei (V O'Sullivan) progressed to the semi finals with ease, it was also a shock to see Robert Milkins convincingly defeat player of the season so far Mark Allen 5-1, In the last quarter final, Pang Junxu made his fist ranking event semi final winning a decider against Joe O'Connor while producing a magnificent 124 break in the final frame.

Although the standard of each quarter final may not have been the highest, we did get to see perfection in frame 3 of Murphy Sijun as the Englishman produced a maximum 147 break, the 7th of his career so far.

So it was down to the semi finals and an unlikely final four with two of the players (Pengfei & Junxu) reaching their first ranking event semi finals, big games for both.

First semi final between Milkins & Pengfei was a scrappy affair where Milkins took control from the outset and continued on to finish off 6-2 winner.

The second semi final was far closer than the score line suggests, Murphy eventually ran out a 6-3 winner but Junxu performed really well considering it was the first ranking event semi final the Chinese player has reached to date.

At times during the tournament the standard may have not lived up to expectation, but the final between Murphy and Milkins really made up for the lack of quality at times during the week, with 13 breaks over 50 in the 16 frames played.

In the end, it was by far Milkins biggest career win as he prevailed 9-7 to also claim the Bet Victor series and take winnings of €230,000