BRECEL BOUNCES BACK

Good luck working this out, but Luca Brecel has won the Scottish Open in Wales. Well, in Scotland or not, Luca Brecel played in his second final in eight days on Sunday (12) and this time, after being comprehensively beat by Zhao Xintong in the UK Championship, he's come out a 9-5 winner at the expense of John Higgins' fourth final defeat this season.

After his amazing performances in the last two tournaments, it's crazy to think that Brecel was ranked 40th in the world just a couple weeks ago heading into the UK Championship. That led to a lot of people saying it's been his "breakthrough" but I'd call that a "bounce back", since Luca has had great highlights in his carrer already, just hasn't managed to stay consistent yet. Will he be now?

At 26 Brecel is still a young contender in this game and a very promising one. But there's been a few times already where we may have thought he'd broken through and it wasn't the case, he went missing for a while.

His first remarkable achievement came in 2012 when he became the youngest player ever to play at the Crucible. However, failed to qualify in the next four years and so far has never won a match at the Crucible.

Then in February 2016, Brecel found form for two weeks again and made two consecutive finals: the Shoot-Out and the German Masters. He came up short in both finals, and indeed he failed to keep that form up. His next 18 months were average.

However, in August 2017 the "Belgian Bullet" found something out of somewhere again and won the China Championship, a £150,000 worth ranking tournament, beating Shaun Murphy in the final and Ronnie O'Sullivan in the way there. He was now inside the top 16 for the first time, up to number 11 in the world. Finally his definite breakthrough? Not to be.

He was not able to keep his ranking up, and didn't win anything until he won the Championship League in 2020 (a non-ranking tournament that marked snooker's resume after the pandemic). Of course any title on this tour is special, but it was another one-off for Luca Brecel, as he didn't qualify for neither that season's World Championship nor the next's. 

Now, is this time the one that Luca Brecel will finally manage to keep his form together? Now 15th in the World Rankings (unfortunately not qualified for next month's Masters because the cut-off was made at the UK Championship), I still think there's no such pressure on Luca Brecel to stay on top right now as long as he can keep gathering experience and remembering himself he's good enough to beat anyone on his day.

However, I do have a feeling that this time it might be different. That's because for most of his career I've found a lack of respect from him to the tactical part of the game. It's OK being an aggressive player, quite normal when you're young, but you've got to be willing to learn and know the importance of the tactical part of the game. At times, when Luca's option has been to only play safe, he's got down and played reckless shots. Up there every top player can score, so if your tactical game is not quite at the same level, you'll come up short at times and find it really difficult to beat even the lower ranked players when you're not on your A game.

But then, it has to be said that these last two weeks have felt different. Firstly because the UK Championship final is Luca's new best result, although it wasn't a win. And secondly, because in the Scottish Open final he played maybe the best tactician snooker has ever seen, and throughout the match his safety play was superior quite a few times.

Again, I don't think that at 26 he's under immediate pressure to keep that up, but it's good signs for Luca Brecel if he'll become a regular name in the late stages of big tournaments.

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