Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy will play out tomorrow's best-of-19 Haikou World Open final after both men won tense semi-finals today. Mark Selby won the first semi-final, but he was far from his best in the match and ended up grinding out a win against a Marco Fu that didn't find his game until it really was a little too late. Selby's highest break of the match was a 74 in the opener, followed by 33 which he made twice in the second frame but he still went into the mid-session break 4-0 ahead of a badly out of sorts Fu. Fu made a 70 to get his first frame on the board, but Selby grinded out the sixth frame to go a frame from victory at 5-1. However, Marco then dominated the next 3 frames with breaks of 50 and 104 along the way as Selby continued to struggle and Fu started to find his form. Fu missed the last red to force the decider in the tenth and after a long safety battle, it was eventually Fu that left it on for Mark after a snooker and Selby duly cleared up to fall over the line a 6-4 winner.
Shaun Murphy found himself at 1-1 early with Mark Allen, after they shared the 2 opening tense frames. Murphy though took a boost from winning the second after a good pot on the last red, and he quickly went 3-1 up at the interval with breaks of 74 and 69. Murphy quickly got to 57 in the fifth frame and looked like going 4-1 up, but he missed a trickier black and a great 66 clearance from Allen got him back into the match at 2-3. However, a terrible safety from Allen in the next gifted Murphy a chance which he took this time to go 2 clear again at 4-2 with a run of 67. Allen controlled a very scrappy 7th frame to close again to 4-3, and he had a chance to level at 4-4 but he missed a tricky last pink to the middle, which Murphy then made a nice pot on to go 5-3 ahead and 1 frame from the final. Murphy had an early chance to win, but could only make a break of 22 before going in-off and Mark punished him with a 100 clearance to close once more to 4-5. The tenth frame was incredibly tense, but good pots on brown and a great long pot on the blue to get on the pink gave Murphy a 7 point lead with the black left. After a short battle it was Mark that potted it to force a re-spot and after 10 minutes or more of fantastic safety play from both players, it was Allen that made the costly error, going in-off on a missed double attempt to give the victory to Shaun Murphy in lucky (or unlucky for Allen) circumstances.
Semi-final results:
Shaun Murphy 6-4 Mark Allen
Mark Selby 6-4 Marco Fu
Final Preview:
Mark Selby Vs Shaun Murphy - Both of our two finalists have been playing really well at different points this week, and have dealt with the pressured situations well when they have come along. Still I think Mark Selby has really not been playing at his absolute best for the whole of the week, only showing some of his best off against Liang Wenbo, and he was very lucky that Marco Fu played as badly as he did in the semi-finals for him to get through to tomorrows final. However, this isn't too dissimilar to the 2012 UK Championship, where Selby was far from his best for the whole tournament but still managed to grind out a win in the final against Shaun Murphy. Murphy though has been scoring well this week, and I think his safety play is actually much improved from the start of the season and he has been attacking the balls well. Shaun has also said that he has started to learn from his mistakes that he kept repeating in the last few years. He has had a poor record against Selby in major matches, and one of the mistakes he has made is letting Selby take control of the game and let the game go scrappy. If Murphy can get off to a good start and attack, as he has done all week, I believe he has a brilliant chance of victory.
Prediction: 10-7 to Shaun Murphy
Whatever the outcome it will be a good final, to finish a decent work of snooker, that has seen some great matches and exciting finishes. But will we have one more tomorrow? Well I can't wait to find out.
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