As we rolled into October we were treated with a feast of
snooker (which helped take my mind off of the fact it’s my least favourite
month). After the conclusion of qualifying for the International Championships
we had the Ruhr Open on the European Tour and the Haining Open on the Asian
Tour, in the lead up to the International Championships in Daqing. For me one
man was particularly impressive and that was David Gilbert.
We all know that David is an incredibly talented player but
he hasn’t always displayed this on a consistent basis. He has previously
reached the Last 16 of the World Championships in 2012 and been a semi-finalist
on the European Tour but he simply hasn’t played as well on tour as he did
through October.
It all started at the Ruhr Open. He was very lucky in round
one to beat Thai Noppon Saengkham 4-3, before then thrashing James Cahill 4-0
in round two making two centuries in that game as Cahill only scored 20 points
in the whole match. After Mitchell Mann won the opening frame of their Last 32
match, the class from Gilbert continued as Mann only went on to score another
19 points, while Dave waded in with runs 68, 77 and 58. Coming back the next
day for the Last 16 he faced a particularly tough test against Peter Ebdon. The
match was very long and drawn out with not much to speak of in terms of breaks.
In the end Gilbert was the 4-2 winner setting up a quarter-final with Barry
Hawkins that was set to start straight afterwards. Breaks of 78, 133 and 60
were the keys though as he showed no signs of fading against a top player after
a short turnaround and he ran out a 4-2 winner to put himself in the
semi-finals.
By that time there was only Gilbert, Mike Dunn, Rory McLeod
and Tian Pengfei left in the tournament and I probably would have made Gilbert
the favourite against Tian and to probably go on and win the tournament.
However, it wasn’t to be after he lost out in a narrow match 4-3 on the pink
having at one stage needed snookers on the pink and being 3-1 down in the match
earlier on. You felt at the time that maybe that was David’s chance to win an
event and perhaps it had passed him by. As much talent as he may have he
doesn’t show it anywhere near consistently enough for anybody to believe that
he could do this with any regularity.
Gilbert did not enter the Asian Tour event the week before
the International Championships and when he turned up at the venue in Daqing he
had a very difficult match in the Last 64 with Xiao Guodong. Despite a century
break from Guodong, Gilbert made breaks of 96 and 121 on the way to a narrow
6-5 win, holding on having been 5-3 up earlier on. Next up he had a tough
battle with talented youngster Oliver Lines. David made another century early
on in the contest but still found himself 4-3 down in a real tough affair
before winning all of the last three frames and turning it around to win 6-4.
In the Last 16 his opponent was Ryan Day who had just seen
off Ding Junhui in another titanic tussle. After going 2-1 behind Dave made a
68 and 69 to go 3-2 ahead and then from 3-3 he made a 50 and 58 to go one away
from victory at 5-3. A 93 from Day would certainly have put the pressure on at
5-4, but he was able to close it out in the next frame for a 6-4 win and his
first ever appearance in the quarter-finals of a full ranking event.
Next up was a former International runner-up Marco Fu in the
quarter-finals and I fully expected Marco to win. He went 3-1 down early on and
despite a 74 to go 2-3 Fu made an 89 to lead 4-2. From there Gilbert got his
game together winning an important eighth frame on the colours to level the
contest at 4-4 and consolidating that with a 130 break to lead 5-4. Fu forced
the decider with a 78, and did all of the early running in the decider but when
Gilberts chance came he made a superb clearance of the last couple of reds and
all the colours in true style to steal the match on the final black and put
himself into the semi-finals.
In a best-of-17 major semi-final over two sessions his
opponent was Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and as well as the Thai was playing both
players would have fancied their chances of getting into their first major
ranking event finals. It was nervy early as both players had chances to settle
down and with the score at 3-3 it looked like running close. The final frame of
the first session looked key as Gilbert made an 83 to win it and the session at
5-3. The first of the second session was also key as he took a tight frame to
move 6-3 ahead and quickly went on to lead 8-3. While Un-Nooh did peg it back
to 5-8 Gilbert was able to get over the line and win the match 9-5 setting up a
first ever ranking event final, and his opponent was John Higgins.
He stayed with him in the final until after going 5-5, he
lost all of the remaining frames to see Higgins lift the trophy a 10-5 winner
but it was still an amazing week for David as he picked up £65,000 added to his
£4,500 for making the semi-finals at the Ruhr Open. To put that into
perspective that is more money than Gilbert has earned in all of the other events
he has played in the last season and a half combined and means that having
started the season in 35th position he is now up to 19th
in the rankings after the Gibraltar Open.
A clear winner for October's Player of the Month then, see who November's is tomorrow.
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