Moment of the Month: January: Murphy finally completes Triple Crown

Today also sees the beginning of my countdown of the best moments in the snooker world for 2015, counting them down with nominations of one from every month of the year, before deciding on an overall winner which I will announce along with my player of the year and favourite match of the year with the posts on New Years Day. Starting off in January, there was one stand out moment in my view and that was Shaun Murphy finally completing snookers triple crown...

You might look at what I do with the Player of the Month and Moment of the Month pieces for a few months and think that there is a link. The difference is the Player of the Month will take on the angle of describing player performances with statistics and all the rest of it in the cold machine like way. Whereas, Moment of the Month comes more from the heart talking of the most emotion grabbing moments of a particular month in the snooker world both for the player or players involved and for the fans.

That is why we start in January with moment of the month by looking at a different angle on Shaun Murphy’s Masters win and what it meant to him, and what it meant to his army of fans (including myself) and why it was such a great moment for all of those reasons.

The main background and context to the situation is this. A world champion in 2005, a UK Champion in December 2008, it had been 6 years and 1 month since that win when he turned up at the Alexandra Palace in January this year looking to complete the Triple Crown. In 2012 he had his best chance to that point, being beating by Neil Robertson in the final. He could not take out revenge for that defeat a year later in 2013 when he lost in the semi-finals 6-2 to the Australian. When he lost in the 2014 Masters semi-final I believe we saw a reaction from Shaun that had been brewing up inside of him for a long time.

He was actually incredibly frustrated just a week earlier at the Championship League when, on the second day of group one he went to pieces and was nearly relegated, surviving in 5^th place as other results went his way. The snooker he had exhibited was far from his usual standard. To say he was down in the dumps would be an understatement. Things came together the next day when he came from 2-0 down to beat Mark Davis 3-2 when everything clicked during a 147 maximum break.

Skip forward a week and he came from 4-2 down to beat Ding Junhui 6-4 in the first round of the Masters. On Thursday in the quarter-finals he got off to a slow start again but showed what he was about coming from 4-1 down to win 6-4 against Marco Fu. The semi-finals was a different story altogether. A 6-1 loss to Mark Selby might not look like the end of the world but it was another addition to the growing list of Shaun’s final, semi-final and quarter-final defeats since his last major. He contemplated his career and the direction things were heading in and thought of doing something else.

So, a year later, he played Mark Selby again in the first round of the 2015 Masters. Demons needed to be expelled but the build-up for Shaun was not ideal. He had been ill with a chest infection and only been practising during the latter parts of the week ahead of the match on the first Sunday afternoon. After storming into a 5-1 lead, he was quickly pegged back to 5-5 but to get over the line there did him a lot of good. Who knows what his reaction would have been if he had have lost that one.

He had plenty of time to reflect before coming back on the Friday evening to play Stephen Maguire. Once again he had to do it the hard way from 2-0 down but I had the belief that going into that match, he was going to win the tournament.

When I woke up on the Tuesday morning the thought that filled my brain and I still have no idea why, was that Shaun Murphy WAS going to win the Masters and that may or may not be down to a dream I had whilst tucked up in bed on Monday evening that involved Shaun lifting the crystal. I played the thoughts down in case he did lose and I looked like a nutter, and the only person I have told about that as I write this is my brother when I saw him on the following Tuesday after Shaun had won the trophy.

I sent my best wishes to Shaun after each of his victories, and following the semi-final win against Mark Allen, with the belief still there that he was going to win, no doubt, I decided to play it down on my blog too and predict a Neil Robertson win as my record had been pretty abysmal on the tipping front at that time, as a sort of reverse psychology play. Sorry Neil.

My text to Shaun on Saturday night concluded “I've got a feeling you’ll do the job tomorrow”. Nowhere in the dreams or visions had anyone sent me wind of a 10-2 winning score line but I guess that really was revenge for the 2012 and 2013 defeats at the Australians hands as he dominated him from start to finish in the same way Robertson had done in the years previously. At the end a little punch of the table when the winning ball had gone down told you all you needed to know. He had done it at last. The pressure was off. The chains of Masters disappointment that had dragged him down a year earlier were finally released from him. The sense I got from his statements afterwards to Hazel was a sense of relief and genuine happiness.

He fully deserved the win and for the manner in which he did it he will now go down in history as one of the games greats, as a Triple Crown winner.

 

There you have our first nominee for the title of the best moment in snooker for 2015, plenty more are to come and you will find out who is next tomorrow when I announce my winner for February.