This afternoon saw the first of today’s two semi-finals completed as Stephen Hendry took on Welshman Matthew Stevens. Click below to read what happened…
Matthew Stevens 6-4 Stephen Hendry
After long match this afternoon it was Welshman Matthew Stevens who got the better of Stephen Hendry and reached his first ranking event final since the 2005 World Championship with a 6-4 win.
Both coming into the match in good form, Hendry signalled his intent with a cracking long red with his opening shot, holding nicely for the black. Unfortunately for him he could not come nicely on the next red and having missed an attempt to the yellow pocket, Stevens showed that he was also in good shape by making a break of 120 in response!
In the second Stevens looked good again before a missed red started a bout of safety which was won by Hendry, though it already looked like he wasn’t in the form he had shown in his previous three matches this week.
Matthew Stevens had no such trouble though and moved back into the lead with another century in the third frame, 116 this time and crucially took a scrappy fourth to lead 3-1 at the break. Both players had several chances in this frame and after Stevens suffered a kick on the final yellow, it looked like Stephen might steal it, but a poor attempt on the pink proved to be his undoing.
Still not playing well, he did at least manage to make it 3-2 after the interval as his battling qualities kept him in touch. A missed blue in the next proved to be extremely costly though as Stevens moved 4-2 ahead again.
As the match became very scrappy and littered with mistakes, Hendry managed to level it at 4-4 by taking the next two frames, but a fluked red from Stevens in frame seven moved him to just one away from the match at 5-4. Though he needed a couple of chances, Stevens was excellent in the next frame and a missed red along the bottom cushion from Hendry brought the handshake and confirmed a 6-4 win for the Welshman.
It is great to see Matthew in a final again and it would be nice to see him win what would be only his second ranking event title in tomorrow’s final. Also it is a huge boost to his provisional ranking and will surely put him right back in contention to reclaim a place in the top 16 again, though he will have to keep this form going when he gets back to Prestatyn and the qualifiers. Still, a few more points tomorrow will do him no harm and he will be hoping to make his greater experience count against either Mark Allen or Neil Robertson.
Stephen meanwhile will be bitterly disappointed not to have reached another final because before today he had probably been the form player of the tournament. For whatever reason though he just didn’t turn up today and it wasn’t as if he didn’t have his chances, he could have taken frames four and six quite easily but he just wasn’t playing well enough. I just hope that he can take confidence from his performances over the week and produce a good display at the UK Championship next month. He has at least gained 3,200 ranking points this week and recovered his dodgy start to the season somewhat, but I doubt he’ll care too much at the moment.