Australian Open 2015 June 29 - July 5

[motorhead]

It's funny, Maguire mentioned that he had been watching Gould at times and thought he's been the best player this week, but he wasn't sure whether this was Gould's first ranking semi-final. It was Maguire whom Gould beat in the Wuxi Classic last season to reach his first semi. :wink:

Haha true.

anyone know what time the first semifinal starts gmt?

4am.

[mikeyd100]

It goes to show how difficult a game snooker can be.
One day you can play well and suddenly the wheels
fall off.
Gould has been playing a steady game and it would
be nice to see him win this tournament.

So true regards the differing form, so hard to maintain.... even though this is a short tournament.

[Odrl]

Looking forward to both matches. :smile:

Obviously Higgins-Maguire would make for a great final, but the two underdogs are both entertaining players on their day. We have only seen one of Jones' matches, where he played very well, while Gould progressed to this stage on the non-televised table, but he too seems to be playing well.

As I mentioned earlier, Gould and Maguire played in the quarter-finals of the Wuxi Classic at the start of last season, and it was a really entertaining match, very high-scoring in the early part and nervy towards the end, going down to the final black in the decider. It was Gould who prevailed on that occasion, but this time I am going for the two favourites to win, most likely in close matches. :smile:

[robertmac]

I am looking forward to the final and it should
be a great match. Higgins scored well vs Jones
but Gould seems to be the more consistent.
I hope Gould wins it.

[Byrom]

How proud must John Higgins feel getting to yet another final at the age of 76

One of the greatest players of all time.

[ghost121]

Higgins is a class act and played very solidly from 0-4, helped along by Jones getting tight as the enormity of the situation got to him. Would really like Gould to win this one, but I fear Higgins will work out a way to lift the title whatever happens.

[j6uk]

4am.

cheers motorhead, i'll try an catch some of the final tomorrow

[DeanH]

just finished watching my record of Gould/Maguire and caught the highlights of the Higgins/Jones

Gould played superbly, just like he did all those years ago at the World Champ's and I would like to see him take the trophy
I hope Jones takes this good run and has great things this season

Unfortunately British Eurosport is not showing the final live at all and the only showing is at 1700BST
so it could be hahasport again

[Odrl]

Another fine day of snooker then. A strong performance from Gould, helped a little by Maguire's bad luck and bad day in general. He has been known to crack a little on the big occasions, so I hope he does himself justice tomorrow. :smile:

The other match was great stuff, but unfortunately I could guess pretty early that Higgins would eventually win, from all the references to his great comebacks in the past. I think the key frame was the 8th, where Jones really should have gone 5-3 ahead, but he made a poor job of defending his lead on a difficult table and allowed Higgins to clear up. Still, it was a good week for him, and hopefully he can appear more frequently at the business end of tournaments from now on.

Eurosport International only has an hour's worth of highlights of the first session tomorrow morning, so I am tempted to stay up and watch it live instead. :smile:

[motorhead]

I turned off Higgins' streaming down 0-4, never I would have thought to read 6-4 this morning given how the match was panning out.
I didn't watch Maguire's match but 1-6 to Gould? Just brutal. From the frames scores breakdown it seems he had openings in every single frame but could only score a few points each time: 34-1-4-11-7 then the 6th frame was the 1st Gould had the opening with a break 15, Maguire made a break of 1 followed by two 38 by Gould.

[robertmac]

I like Gould's attitude and playing his game his way. The following is
from the WS website.

Gould eased into a 4-0 lead over Maguire with top runs of 54, 82 and 87. Glasgow’s Maguire pulled one back with a 61, but scored just one point in the last two frames as Gould sailed through, sealing victory with a break of 100.

“My game plan is always the same, everything I see I go for,” said Gould. “Some days they go in, some days they don’t, and luckily today everything went smoothly. John and I are both playing well, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

[j6uk]

9-5 to higgins? that missed pink from martin can only put steem up johns cilt

[ghost121]

Higgins has won ranking finals playing his C game and one thing he won't do is choke. Gould is capable of taking four frames in a row with flawless snooker but it isn't likely to happen. Unfortunately.

[DeanH]

won done Higgins - what a thoroughly enjoyable match
glad I got up early to catch all of it.
Initially I thought Higgins was going to run away with it as Gould looked like he may have lost steam after the superb week he has had, but he came back and held his own all match

[ghost121]

Gould deserves lot of credit and the odds were always going to be against him due to the vast experience of Higgins in such situations. Higgins so often wins this way, an extremely tough man to beat in a final. Anyone know how he places in the ratio of ranking finals played/won/lost list? Wouldn't be surprised if he had a better average than most of the other big winners.