Mark Selby, the defending world champion sent a warning signal to his fellow snooker professionals that he is in fine form to defend his world title. Selby overcame a rejuvenated Mark Williams in the final of the China Open. The final was played at the Beijing University Students Gymnasium, Beijing, China.
To reach the final, Selby won a semi-final match against the surprise of the tournament Hossein Vafaei. Prior to this event Vafaei had not progressed to the latter stages of a competition. Despite having done well to get this far, Vafaei, ranked 76 in the world went down 6-1 to the world number one. During the course of the game, Selby knocked in a break of 103. Mark Williams had a tougher semi-final, overcoming Kyren Wilson 6-4. This was after Wilson had leveled the match with a fine break of 130.
In reaching the final, Williams, aged 42, reversed a period of erratic form and the twice-world champion came close to winning his first major title in several years (his last major win being back in 2011). However, in the end, Selby proved too tenacious a competitor. Despite the match being very tight, with never more than two frames between the players, Selby had more to offer in the closing stages.
In the opening frames of the match, refereed by Jan Verhaas, Selby started strongly. A break of 100 gave the Englishman a 2-0 lead. Williams, with his first clear chance in the match, launched a break of 124 before Selby, in a top-class portion of the match, made the third consecutive frame century with an effort of 105 to establish a 3-1 lead. Bizarrely in the fourth frame, on a break of six, Williams brushed the brown ball with is sleeve, giving four points away and leaving the balls spread nicely for Selby. The match continued to be contested strongly with Selby moving to 5-3 ahead. In the closing frame of the first session Williams proceeded to make his second century; a break of 106 reduced his arrears to 4-5.
With the start of the evening’s play, Williams won three of the opening four frames to move 7-6 ahead and to lead the game for the first time. The highlight was a break of 81 from Williams which featured several difficult pots. A rare incident in the thirteenth frame saw a stalemate situation, leading to the referee ordering the balls to the re-racked and the frame restarted.
From 6-7 down Selby began to play stronger and the form he had shown in winning the world championship last spring was evident. Selby won four of the last five frames and with this the title. His impressive run included another century – 124 – together with breaks of 95 and 70. On clinching victory Selby won a first prize of £85,000 ($100,000).
The frame scores were (Selby first):
Session 1:
122-9 (54), 100-3 (100), 0-124 (124), 109-6 (105), 1-82 (82), 73-46 (50), 47-71, 80-23, 32-106 (106)
Session 2:
1-75 (68), 76-22 (55), 29-91 (65), 0-81 (81), 99-0 (95), 55-70, 70-0 (70), 129-4 (124), 86-16
On winning the match Selby clinched his eleventh ranking tournament and his fourth of the season, confirming his status as by far and away the world number one.
