This afternoon’s first semi-final has seen the first classic match of the decade as defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan just about edged 1998 and 2003 Wembley Master Mark Williams to book his place in tonight’s final…
Once again O’Sullivan was not happy in his post-match interview, saying that he is nervous every time he enters the arena at the moment and felt that Mark was by far the better player on the day, but now into the final he will be the hot favourite to win this title once again. Despite his long game not being the best right now, around the balls he is as good as ever and as demonstrated by his fist pump at the finish today, is determined to walk away with the trophy tomorrow.
Mark meanwhile will be gutted to lose but this week he has played as well as I have seen him play in at least five years and this has to be encouraging for the future. He has been looking better for a while now, only to suffer a few pieces of bad luck along the way such as his broken wrist, THAT kick against Ali Carter in Telford in 2008 and his tip problems at the Crucible last year. Today in particular though he was back to his very best and on course to meet Ronnie against in the last 16 at the Crucible, perhaps he will gain some revenge for today’s result there.
Looking ahead to tonight I can imagine that Ronnie will be cheering for Stephen Maguire, though my suspicion is that Selby will do enough to set up a repeat of the 2009 final…