Welsh Open 2014 - Discussion

[Neil Taperell]

That wasn't a bad performance........he just couldn't be bothered .

[scottley]

The best player ever V the form player of the season, what more could you ask for?

[Neil Taperell]

Back to back 147's .......one by each player . Micheala Tabb in a Bikini . Clive Everton and Neal Foulds commentating .

The winning Lottery numbers ..............that will do for starters !!!

[scottley]

Carlsberg don't do snooker tournaments

[Neil Taperell]

But if they did

[Holden Chinaski]

Anyone have a link for a live stream?

[Odrl]

We've had two top players in almost every major final this season, the only exceptions being Shanghai, which was still an interesting pairing, and India, an event that wasn't really on par with the proper ones anyway. I think this one is the icing on the cake, a meeting between two of the three best players in the world, for the first time in a final this season. It's also a meeting between the two players who play the game with more finesse than anyone else in the world, in my opinion. :smile:

Yesterday I said they were not only playing for the Welsh Open title, but also for the title of the best player in the world... I still stand by that. I know these things don't come down to a single match between the players in question, because everyone is subject to form after all, so there is no guarantee that the match would have gone the same on a different day. No, it's more about achievement over a longer period, and three players have stood out for some time now. Ronnie O'Sullivan has won the last two World titles, then showed who was the man again in the Champion of Champions event, only the second time he has played in a big event all season. Ding Junhui became the first player to win three consecutive ranking titles in two decades, and even O'Sullivan's return couldn't stop him in the International Championship. In December, Neil Robertson won the UK Championship, adding another title to the China Open and the Wuxi Classic in 2013. In doing so he joined a pretty elite club of players who have won the triple crown over the course of their career, and he has tightened his grip on the top place in the rankings. After the new year O'Sullivan struck again, winning the Masters with a great performance, and then Ding captured his fourth title of the season in the German Masters, to leave things in a kind of a three-way tie between these players. Well, that tie is about to be broken tonight, in either Ding's or O'Sullivan's favour. :wink:

These two players have not really met enough times to call it a great rivalry. In fact, they only seem to meet once every few years, apart from their regular meetings in the Premier League in the past. Their most memorable match is of course the 2007 Masters final, where O'Sullivan produced one of his best-ever performances to win 10-3. It was the first time since Ding's China Open win in 2005 that he was outplayed like that in a big match, and the hostile atmosphere really got to him. It was two and a half years before he was anywhere near the same player again. The other big match they've played was the final of the 2006 Northern Ireland Trophy, and Ding played really well to pull away from 6-6 and win 9-6 on that occasion, still as a teenager.

I don't know how relevant those matches are, because both players are at a different stage of their career now, although O'Sullivan seems to be playing pretty much the same snooker. :smile: Their most recent match came in the quarter-finals of the Champion of Champions, a 6-5 win for O'Sullivan. He was outplayed for most of that match, at one time trailing 5-3 and in trouble, and he made a mistake that could have left Ding in for the match, but he saw a red drop into the green pocket and went on to win the frame. Ding was also on a break of 50 in the decider before the split went against him, and O'Sullivan did very well to fight his way back into the frame and win it. So you could say he was lucky to survive that, but he did survive it, and that just added to the psychological advantage he already had over Ding.

So that's the past, how about the present? Well, I think O'Sullivan has played the better snooker this week. None of his opponents have got anywhere close to him, and the only time he looked anywhere close to trouble was midway through the 2nd frame against Hawkins, and even then he came back really strongly to take control of the match completely. He had a couple of pretty bad misses from distance, but he hardly made a mistake from close range, even in those tricky pots to the middle or the baulk corners, or along the cushions. Tactically he seems pretty bulletproof, thinking very clearly and never losing his discipline. He is not really in the mood to waste many chances, and no one wastes as few as O'Sullivan when he is playing well, although his opponent comes pretty close...

Ding hasn't played his best tournament of the season here, but he has raised his "normal" game to such a standard that he can reach finals anyway, which is pretty impressive and somewhat unexpected this season. His draw was easier than O'Sullivan's, but of course that's not something he can affect, and he can only beat whoever is in front of him. I think the most impressive thing about his game this season has been the pressure play, winning deciders and other crucial frames with big breaks time and time again. Even yesterday he made a pretty crazy total clearance in the last frame against Perry. He is one of the few breakbuilders in O'Sullivan's league when he gets going, like in the final of the International Championship, and he has made seven centuries this week so far, the same as O'Sullivan. But for some reason I still have more confidence in O'Sullivan's scoring this week. Tactically, Ding has been great this season as well, showing incredible patience in the close-fought frames, but I would give the edge to O'Sullivan here as well.

Both of these players have a habit of raising their games for the big finals. Looking at their win percentage in ranking finals, O'Sullivan has won 25 out of 35, excluding the one-session World Open, so he wins 5 of 7 on average, which is pretty impressive. Having said that, Ding's ratio is 8 out of 10 (also excluding the short-format stuff), so he is one of the few players to have an even better record than O'Sullivan. Ding was asked after the match yesterday about whom he would rather play in the final, and he said O'Sullivan, because you don't get to play him much these days and there is always something you can learn from him. Interesting mindset, but he seems very relaxed about it, which is understandable, because he has already won more than he expected this season, so the pressure is off at this point. O'Sullivan also tried to avoid the favourite status a bit, referring to Ding as the best player in the world, and saying this would show him where he is at at the moment...

I think it's going to be a good match in any case, and hopefully close right until the end. If anyone is going to run away with it, I think it's more likely to be O'Sullivan. When cueman says "I think he'll be lucky to get more than 4 frames on the board", I think we can all envisage a scenario like that pretty easily, considering pretty much every top player in recent years has found themselves on the wrong end a major trashing against O'Sullivan at some point, but there is a lot of cause for optimism. Since losing to Joe Perry in the Wuxi Classic in June, Ding has only lost three times outside of the PTCs, all against fellow top players, and never more convincingly than 6-4, so he is quite tough to crack these days. He also looked the less impressive player ahead of the German Masters final, scraping through in a decider, while Trump played really well, but the final was a different story... Still, Ding can't win them all, and as I said earlier, I think O'Sullivan is playing the better snooker this week. O'Sullivan to win 9-6. :wink:

[Odrl]

Scrappy start. :smile:

[Billy]

Darren Morgan's voice makes me sleepy. He sounds more like an indoor bowls commentator than a snooker one.

[Dr_Doctor]

Apparently, MJW took Ding to Nandos yesterday. That should make a difference.

[Dani]

One of the worst shots I've ever seen from Ronnie

[Odrl]

That was just about the worst shot O'Sullivan has ever played. :smile:

Heh, beat me to it. :smile:

[Dr_Doctor]

That was one of the worst shots I've seen from Ding.

[cyberheater]

That was one of the worst shots I've seen from Ding.

Is he succumbing to the O'Sullivan pressure already.

[Dr_Doctor]

I wonder if O'sullivan has beaten Hendry in the no of centuries department?