Today saw the second and final day of the fourth World Series event this season as John Higgins, Shachar Ruberg, Ding Junhui and Mark Selby went for the trophy…
Winning his second event of the inaugural World Series that he helped to establish, John Higgins showed his class today with a faultless display of snooker during his two matches.
In his semi-final he met the 14-year-old Shachar Ruberg from Israel who impressively defeated Sergey Vasiliev in yesterday’s quarter-final match, but had no answer for the quality and experience of Higgins. Winning 4-0, John booked an appearance in the final against the winner of the Warsaw leg, Ding Junhui, who saw off world number four Mark Selby in the first semi-final of the day.
The final started off as a close encounter as your would expect between two players like Ding and John, with both of the opening two frames going to the final few balls. Crucially though, Higgins was to take both of them and from there just got better and better, limiting Ding to 20 points in the next three frames and running out a 5-0 winner. After his disappointing form in the Premier League since he won the Grand Prix, it is good to see Higgins back in decent form in advance of the upcoming UK Championship, an event he will be trying to win for the third time.
It is a shame that we could not watch the action on Eurosport but hopefully it will be worth it in the end as the Grand Finals which will be staged in the Kremlin next year are bound to be an amazing spectacle.
FINAL
Ding Junhui 0-5 John Higgins 57(57)-73(73), 57(42)-71(46), 8-69(52), 1-72(65), 11-63(58)
SEMI FINALS
Ding Junhui 4-2 Mark Selby 60-64, 59-1, 43-80, 70-52, 67-50
John Higgins 4-0 Shachar Ruberg 79(79)-16, 92(84)-0, 127(126)-5, 72(65)-40