With the Wembley Masters little over a week away, two of this season’s five ranking event winners Shaun Murphy and Ricky Walden have been talking about their hopes for the tournament…
Shaun Murphy told the Sheffield Star:
“My record at the Masters is abysmal, if I get past the quarters it will be the best I’ve ever done. Now I’ve won the UK title, who knows what I can do?”
“I’d love to win the Masters. If I could add that to the UK and World titles I’d be over the moon, that would be some achievement.”
Ricky Walden told the Flintshire Chronicle:
“It’s brilliant news. I’m back practising hard and I can’t wait to get down to Wembley.
“Even though I’ve just won a ranking event, the wild card place could easily have gone to players like Davis or Jimmy because they still put bums on seats. But they’ve given it to me and hopefully I’ll go down there and do well.
“I’ve never played at Wembley or even been there before so it’s going to be a new experience for me, but I’m going to be really well supported and I’m really looking forward to it.”
On opponent Mark King:
“He’s a really good player and it will be different this time as it’s the first time I’ve played him in a professional tournament. But as long as I settle down, I should be fine.”
On learning he had the wildcard:
“We all got in at about 8.30am in the morning, Vegas time. I then got a call from World Snooker saying I’d got the wild card, so I went into other room, told the boys and we went straight back out again!”
It is hard at this time of year as all you want to do is chill out. But to be honest, when you’ve got something like Wembley coming up, nothing else matters.”