Hawkins made it into the his first Masters final with a superbly well deserved victory against Judd Trump. Hawkins started off in superb fashion with consecutive centuries to take an early 2-0 lead. After a missed pink in the third frame, he appeared to let Judd off the hook as a good break to win the third was followed up in the fourth to make it 2-2. Trump missed a sitter in frame five which let Hawkins in for a frame winning contribution. Despite that Judd got back into his groove to lead 4-3 and had a great chance at the start of the eighth before missing another simple enough red and a 78 from Barry made it 4-4. His third century of the match in the ninth put a frame away, before a scrappy tenth went down to the final red. Judd's poor safety shot left it on from range, but it wasn't straightforward from there as he still need a stunning pot on the blue with equally good positional play to leave the pink easy for a 6-4 victory.
Later on in the second semi-final Ronnie O'Sullivan overcame world champion Stuart Bingham 6-3, despite the chances that Bingham had. Stuart won the opening frame and could so easily have won both of the next two frames after that, so was pretty unlucky to find himself 3-1 down at the interval. It was soon 4-1 with a century from the Rocket, and in the next he potted some amazing balls to come back from a snooker needed and make it 5-1. Stuart started to score more heavily thereafter to put the next two frames on the board at 3-5 as O'Sullivan was visibly beginning to feel the pressure of making his 11th Masters final. Stuart had a good chance to make it 4-5 but missed a double on the final red to win the frame and a jaw-dropping long red opened up another brilliant clearance that saw him win the frame by a point, taking out a 6-3 victory that was certainly not that comfortable.
Semi-Final Results:
Barry Hawkins 6-4 Judd Trump
Ronnie O'Sullivan 6-3 Stuart Bingham
Final Preview
Ronnie O'Sullivan Vs Barry Hawkins - Here we are then with a repeat of the 2013 World Championship final in this years Masters final. Ronnie has said that he had to play some of his best ever snooker to win that match, and that was due to the same solid play that Barry Hawkins has shown in this tournament. Starting though with Ronnie, your opinion on how he has played and how he feels this week depends on how much you look into his post-match interviews for the BBC. In them he has commented on with regularity "alignment issues" on the shot and general issues with technique caused by a back problem he had last year. Despite however well he has seemed to play, there are signs of what he has been talking about in each of his matches so far. Against Mark Williams he was very uncomfortable in the first six frames going 4-2 behind and not making a 50 break in that time. As he puts it "I've been struggling to even make a 20 break in practice". If you watch those six frames there is certainly a little bit of that in evidence. Up against Mark Selby he offered up a few chances early on when he was 50 odd points in front in those frames. His long potting though has been fantastic, and that coupled with some challenging clearances has been able to bail him out so far. The same was true against Stuart Bingham when he refers to how many shots he was over-hitting, and generally you could see how hard he was having to work to "stick in there" and "grind it out", his words not mine. At the table against Bingham he appeared as agitated as he was in any of his matches and joked afterwards that he doesn't know how he'll manage two sessions tomorrow.A word that is said a lot about Barry Hawkins is "solid". That is certainly true of Barry and his match player is exactly that, but in my view this week he has been much better than just solid. Barry has two problems and I think that the first certainly causes the second. He has admitted to struggling to get up for matches in smaller tournaments, especially after the 2013 World final as he struggles to replicate that feeling. That for me is why he can tend to lose matches from a long way ahead, by simply not being in the same frame of mind. In both his 2014 and 2015 runs to the world semi-finals he has threatened to do that, but he has shown a great deal of bottle to come through because big events like the World's and Masters mean something to him. Tomorrow playing Ronnie in another massive final will be perfect for him. Against Judd he was superb, starting with two centuries and not being concerned at finding himself 4-3 behind he made another on the way to three frames in a row to finish. It took a huge performance to win that game, and you can see a big difference in Hawkins now that he has gotten that first win at the Masters, in the first round against Joe Perry at the start of the week. Barry is striking the ball brilliantly and if he doesn't fear Ronnie he has every chance of getting the Triple Crown title he deserves.
The issue for Ronnie could be how he deals with these fragile areas of his game and these niggling areas of technique that are causing him such agitation over a two session match. If Hawkins gets off to a good start in the first session of eight frames and can take a 5-3 lead or at the very least be no worse than level at 4-4 then he will have Ronnie thinking. There's no doubt that Ronnie is still playing well, because his long potting is in tune, and he is making big clearances for fun. However, he is relying on these to get him out of trouble. No-one has come out as yet and played their very best against him but Hawkins has not been far away from his this week. If he takes advantage of the errors that Ronnie has made this week with positional play that have not been here before, and can put out of his mind that he is playing the best player to ever play the game then the chance is there.
Prediction: If Hawkins can stay with Ronnie in session one, the evening session will be a big test for the Rocket. Overall - Hawkins to win 10-8.
The standard in this years Masters has been superb from start to finish. There have been a few one sided games, but usually when one player has played well it has brought his opponent along for a close match with some real quality, which is what makes these guys the best players in the world.
There's actually quite a break after the final, with a week until the Championship League returns for groups 3 and 4, with the next big tournament play not coming until the beginning of February a the Tempodrome in Berlin for the German Masters.
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