Ding ready to fulfil potential!
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| Ding Junhui beat Ronnie O`Sullivan 13-10 in the Quarter Finals of the 2017 World Snooker Championship |
Today at the Crucible Theatre Ding Junhui completed what was the "biggest win of his career", as himself described it. I am not sure about that, but I believe that beating Ronnie O`Sullivan at the World Snooker Championship is a big mark on his career.
Seeing how the tour is going and how players are getting into their 40's still hungry and prepared nowadays, I think a Snooker player will be not ready to peak before he's around 30 years-old - that's when you have earned experience enough to compete at the top as very few players are nowadays getting results on their 20's - something that certainly help keeping them hungry into their 40's.
Coming back to Ding, he's for me second to none technically. He's the best long potter I've known of, got the best cue-ball control the World has seen, and is up there with the best tactical players you have in the game. However, for a long time his weak on the psychological side of the game (one of Snooker's main needed attributes) has let him down.
Not that it prevented him from breaking through in 2005 winning the China Open and the UK Championship, then win another 2 Triple Crown events as well as winning a record-equalling 5 Ranking titles in the 2013/14 season to later on become World Number One. But lack of consistency, poor record at the Crucible, and a fall from the Top 16 were all consequence of his poor mindset on the table.
It's all understandable with the pressure he suffers from China with hundreds of million people wanting desperately for him to do well and having burst into the scene so early. Anyway, Ding went on to do something to try and change that, and in my opinion he has done just the right thing: work with Terry Griffiths.
Griffiths is for me the best coach in the World to improve the mental side of your game, and you can confirm that looking for before-and-after career results of the likes of Barry Hawkins, Mark Allen and Michael Holt, who all went a level up after working with Griffiths.
The impact of that on Ding's game has been clear to me for a year now since he made the Crucible final last year, but the win over his idol Ronnie O`Sullivan - who has always brought the worst out of a nervy Ding - is the big proof that now, at 30 years of age, the chinese player is ready to go on and fulfil all of his potential.
And having said before he's the technically the best player ever to play the game, may the man to challenge Selby has come at last.
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| Ronnie says "Ding is a different player" |
Only one can win each year. There are many players in line for the World Title that every year it feels like someone has underachieved at the Crucible. O`Sullivan has lost another chance to make it 6, will he ever do it? He certainly have another 3 years to do it and is there to prove us he can stretch his career even farther, but there's only one World Championship every year and time never stops. He has won one Triple Crown every season since 2011/12 and even though the World Snooker Championship is the one he haven't won since 2012/13. He can win another one, but so can Neil Robertson or Stuart Bingham win a second, Barry Hawkins or Judd Trump win a first, John Higgins win a fifth, and Mark Selby win many more.
Although I think Ding is ready to face Selby and stand to him, it's difficult to think that Selby's dominace is any close to it's end when he can win 5 frames outscoring you and then make the next 5 frames go scrappy and still guarantee he's going to win three at least.
I don't think Ding can beat Selby over three days in a best of 33, he might be able to do it if he peaks on Friday when they play two sessions and win 10 or 11 out of the 16 frames to be played that day. If that doesn't happen, I think this World Title is between Selby and Higgins - who I think is the man who has the tactics and the bottle enough to handle Selby in the distance.
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