Shaun Murphy came out on top of Kyren Wilson 10-7 in the final, the world number 7 was a deserved winner after playing some breath-taking snooker all week including a brilliant maximum break in the semi-final against Northern Ireland's Mark Allen.
Many would've saw the withdrawal of Ronnie O'Sullivan as a massive loss on the eve of the Triple Crown event but the exclusion of the 7x world champion was quickly forgotten when the action got underway in impressive fashion with Neil Robertson staging an inspired comeback to defeat John Higgins 6-5 in the first match.
Big names continued to impress with Judd Trump, Mark Selby & Luca Brecel among others progressing from their last 16 ties.
As we all know, the Masters plays host to the top 16 in the world so the standard was always going to be high but 6 of the 8 quarter-finalists where former winners of the Paul Hunter trophy, an example of the quality on show.
After the quarter-final's and with 4 players left in the hunt to be victorious on Sunday night they were Shaun Murphy (6-2 N.Robertson), Mark Allen (6-2 M.Selby), Judd Trump (6-3 Ding Junhui) & Kyren Wilson (6-4 L.Brecel). All players in the world's top 8.
The lineups for the semi-final both had a small bit of added spice with Murphy V Allen & Trump V Wilson having separate rivalries that had fans intrigued.
In the end, Murphy and Wilson (both 6-3) impressively did their talking on the table to set-up a grandstand final showdown.
Heading into the final, the reigning world champion had a significant head-to-head deficit to overcome (10-4) if he was to claim his 1st Masters title.
However, Murphy flew out of the blocks taking a 4-1 lead and extending it to 6-2 after the first session. When they resumed, Wilson did fight back as expected to closed the gap to 8-7 before Murphy ran out a 10-7 winner finishing off with an impressive break of 100.
He claims the title for the 2nd time exactly 10 years after his first in 2015, impressive longevity at the top of the sport.
In my opinion, the drama and standard over the last 7 days was some of the best we have seen in recent times in a Triple Crown event. Bring on Sheffield in April!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment