Kyren Wilson wins Shanghai Masters title in style!
Kyren Wilson won his first Ranking Event in a thrilling final frame decider versus Judd Trump
World Number 54 Kyren Wilson, enjoyed his breakthrough tournament this week as he stormed into the Shanghai Masters title, what rises his Ranking up to 22nd.
It was a great tournament and a Championship pretty well played from Kyren Wilson, who had never previously been to the Semi-Finals of a Ranking Tournament, and last season managed to reach the Last 16 only once. However there was no sign of weakness in Wilson's game, he had a tough draw and managed to beat Joe Perry, Michael Holt and home favorite Ding Junhui on his way to a first Ranking Event Semi-Final. But things wasn't getting any easier, in the Semi-Final he trashed last year's runner-up Mark Allen 6-1, and in the Final he had to play Judd Trump, who knocked Reigning World Champion and last year's Shanghai Masters winner Stuart Bingham, 6-3.
It was a great build-up to the Final: a player who has won the UK Championship, 4 Ranking Events at all plus a World Grand Prix title earlier this year (in a comeback versus 5-Time World Champion Ronnie O`Sullivan), and former Runner-Up at the Crucible, head to head with a player who was just buzzing to be still standing in the tournament and had never previously beaten him in an official match. To be honest, I was all ways expecting Judd Trump to win this, but knew Kyren Wilson would fancy the job, considering how well he had played before in the week.
However the Final did upset me in two ways, both players had a lot of misses and Kyren dominated from the start.
Kyren led 6-3 after the first session, and 8-4 at one point, when Judd Trump started his comeback, forcing the decider. Wilson looked a bit nervy at that moment, but in the decider he did well to put everything behind him after losing a heartbreaking 18th frame and risked a tough red to the middle pocket with the danger of missing and leaving a couple of reds available to the opposite pocket for Trump. He potted the red and never looked back, building a 75 Break.
Kyren Wilson, who vibrated a lot once he potted match ball, pockets £85.000 and guarantees a place in the Champion of Champions in November.
Congratulations for everybody involved in the tournament, organizers, broadcasters, players, fans, etc... for making this tournament so special. The Chinese crowd seems to attend the events in the arena much more now, and EuroSport made a great coverage of it on TV.
There was just a bit of controversial overshadowing the Final, because EuroSport - that showed the tournament during all the week - failed in showing the Final live, but I'm gonna defend EuroSport here, because they're great for Snooker and spread it's word all around Europe. The game is much bigger now and their coverage is very good, they couldn't show the Snooker final this time because they have so many sporting events in the weekend that one sport have to be delayed and not showed live, this time it was Snooker like Rolf Kalb - commentator for EuroSport in Germany - said on Twitter. Anyway they show the Final later, not live, but at least they show it and demonstrates that at least they cares. They've showed Snooker so much now and we couldn't be mad because of one match. I'm not saying it's ideal but we should be thankful for EuroSport as Snooker wouldn't be much popular without them, maybe the European Tour events did not even exist if EuroSport did not broadcast the Snooker.
Snooker players now will enjoy a rest till Wednesday (09/30) when the International Championship Qualifiers get started in Barnsley. 120 players will contest 60 matches over 4 days with the winners going to China. You must be finding it strange the fact that "only" 120 players will play in Barnsley, that's because Reigning Champion (Ricky Walden), World Champion (Stuart Bingham) and the two highest ranked players in the World from China (Ding Junhui & Liang Wenbo) will play their qualifier matches in the main venue.
Ronnie O`Sullivan has said on his EuroSport Blog that he "expect to be playing in the International Championship", but as nothing is a certainty about O`Sullivan, follow our Facebook Page and see if he's playing it or not as soon as the draw is released!
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