Of course the UK Championship is the main event taking place
at the start of December and as he stormed to victory he showed in my opinion
why he is currently the best player in the snooker world.
Whatever was thrown his way in York, he overcame with great
skill and bottle as all of the very best players do. On the table he is a heartless
machine. He isn’t afraid to punish players for their mistakes and make them pay
for not taking advantage of the minimal chances that they are given by the
Australian’s minimal mistakes.
There are two great cases of when this was shown in the UK
Championships was against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the Last 32 and in the
semi-finals against Mark Selby. Thepchaiya got himself back into the game with
a break of 140 in the middle of the match, but as we are all well aware he
missed the final black for a magnificent 147 maximum break when he seemed to
have done all of the hard work. While Neil personally would have felt a great deal
of sympathy for his Thai opponent at this point, he didn’t let this show on the
table, by going one frame away from winning the match with a faultless break of
145 which at that stage was the highest break of the tournament also, just to
stick the knife in as far as Thepchaiya would have been concerned.
Then against Mark Selby he was not afraid to stick the knife
in once more. There were several occasions in the match where Mark had got in
first and built a decent lead only to fail in winning the frame in one visit
and giving Robertson a chance. Some of Neil’s clearances to take advantage of
the opportunities handed to him were superb and the catalyst for a stunning 6-0
victory that absolutely no-one could have seen coming. The thinking that the
top players have in these situation is that “if roles were reversed I would not
be shown any sympathy from my opponent” if they were not at the very top of
their games and Neil is one of the best at this.
In the big events he rises to the challenge and that was
what he showed in his last 16 and quarter-final matches against Scottish
opponents Stephen Maguire and then John Higgins. Maguire started his last 16
match with Robertson with a century only to barely get another chance as Neil
scored for fun and didn’t really miss anything. He simply rose to the challenge
and played six sublime frames on the trot to win the match 6-1.
Then against John Higgins he had to sit and watch his
opponent make three century breaks and two other breaks of 66 and 69 in the
five frames of the match that he won. Most players when playing against a
player of John’s class and presented with the snooker that he played would
simply roll over thinking there was no way on the day that such snooker could
be beaten. With Robertson’s sheer grit and determination he knew that he could
still win if he played good snooker and stuck to his game.
Then of course in the final we saw the break to end all
breaks, a maximum 147 break. Under the pressure of a Triple Crown final you
would think that making such breaks would be the last thing on your mind.
However, once presented with the opportunity it is only in Robertson’s nature
to take this chance and the positional play he exhibited not just in the break
but throughout the sessions in the UK final against Liang Wenbo was of the very
highest quality and was the mark of a true champion. The maximum was the first
in the final of a Triple Crown event.
In my opinion Neil is one of the players that is the best at
gearing himself up for the major events as he has shown in 2015 and he will probably
go on to break all records for an overseas player as far as winning major
titles is concerned. His background as an overseas player coming over to the UK
to ply his trade has made him a tougher player and nothing will stand in the
way of success for Neil. The UK Championship is just one example of that and is
why he is my player of the month for December.
Tomorrow of course I will reveal my Player of 2015 and reveal the final order with all 12 nominees for the title.
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