Leading up to the final, both players experienced contrasting semi-final matches. Sharp and confident, Mark Selby easily defeated former world champion Shaun Murphy 6-2 in his semi-final. In contrast, Ronnie O’Sullivan had a rather tenser match against Marco Fu. Leading 3-1 and later 4-2, O’Sullivan began to miss a series of straightforward balls and allowed Fu to come back and edge 5-4 in front. O’Sullivan secured the tenth after some nervous safety play before spectacularly clinching the deciding framer with a break of 130.
The U.K. final was played at the Barbican Centre in York, refereed by Olivier Marteel.
In opening the final O’Sullivan continued his fluent break making by rolling in a clearance of 124. This proved a false indicator of how O’Sullivan was feeling; for most of the opening session he appeared lackluster, failing by his normal high standards with his long-ball potting and his safety play.
Selby, in contrast, was sharp. Never the most fluent of players, the current world champion played tight safety and from this built-up breaks competently, never seeming likely to miss easy balls.
Falling 1-2 behind, to a break of 63 from O’Sullivan, Selby proceeded to win the next five frames to hold a 6-2 advantage at the mid-session interval. During this period Selby made breaks of 67, 63, 51, 58 and 87. Impressive enough, but as the breaks and course of play indicated, O’Sullivan missed chances that he would normally have taken. During this period Selby won frames lasting 33 and 48 minutes.
The standard of play picked up for the second session. Selby opened with a 56 break to move to 7-2. On reaching this point, for his six-frame run, Selby had compiled 489 points to O’Sullivan’s 50. O’Sullivan won the next frame with a break of 80 and added two more, including a break of 134. Selby, at 7-5 ahead responded as a champion should by compiling a break of 137. Remarkably, O’Sullivan responded with another big clearance, this time 130. Three frames had seen three breaks is excess of 130 – a very high standard indeed. This period saw a spell of vintage O’Sullivan break-building as he pulled back to just one frame behind.
O’Sullivan took the next frame as well with a break of 80. However, a 8-7 ahead Selby closed out the match impressively, compiling consecutive century breaks of 134 and 107.
While the opening session had been cagey and mistake ridden, the second session was one of the finest on the circuit for some years. In finishing strongly, Mark Selby won his second U.K. Championship title and completed a second Triple Crown (along with holding the Masters title and the world championship). This was a very high standard final with six centuries and another ten breaks over 50. The frame scores were (Selby first):
Session 1:
0-138 (124), 71-41, 0-63 (63), 103-8 (67), 82-0 (63), 58-32, 109-1 (51,58), 128-0 (87)
Session 2:
65-9 (56), 0-144 (56,80), 36-50, 0-134 (134), 137-0 (137), 0-130 (130), 0-82 (82), 134-0 (134), 118-5 (107)
Selby won the first prize of £170,000 ($200,000) and remains world number 1 in the updated ranking list.
