John Higgins has reached a first Crucible semi-final since landing his fourth world title as he completed a crushing victory over Kyren Wilson.
The 41-year-old Scot turned an overnight 11-5 lead into a 13-6 victory at the Betfred World Championship, and he awaits the winner of the quarter-final between Barry Hawkins and Stephen Maguire.
Before the tournament Higgins was talking a confident game, and he has followed up with a purposeful run through the draw as he targets more silverware in Sheffield.
A pair of centuries and a host of productive scoring visits over 50 meant Higgins gave 25-year-old Kettering cueman Wilson a potting lesson.
Higgins beat Judd Trump to take the 2011 world title, since when his best run had been a quarter-final showing last year.
Higgins was thankful he did not allow Wilson a route back into the match on Wednesday morning, admitting there had been "a little bit of nerves" despite his large lead.
And he is convinced he can secure another world title on Monday night, six years after his last triumph.
"I believe I can, yeah, and it's a great feeling to have. I can - I think," said Higgins.
From the semi-finals onward, the Crucible set-up changes so that rather than the floor featuring two matches concurrently, divided by a partition wall, one table is removed and the other moved to the middle of the arena.
The players romanticise about playing at centre stage, in snooker's most famous venue.
"In the couple of years after what happened in 2011 I've been losing and my form wasn't great, and you think you won't get back to the one-table set-up," Higgins said.
"It's the best place in the world to get out and play, and I can't wait to walk back into the arena and it's just the one table again. I'm buzzing."
Higgins sympathised with Wilson, whose cue tip split in the first session with the match tied at 3-3 and a close contest appearing to be developing.
"He was desperately unlucky," Higgins said. "That's a big moment during the game and obviously for me it's worked out well."
Wilson fixed a new tip but said it was "terrible".
"I like a rock-hard tip and this one felt like a Fruit Pastille," Wilson said.
Of his performance, Wilson added: "I'm so annoyed with myself, so frustrated. But it's a learning curve. I'll be better for next year.
"I'm not in it to make the quarter-finals, I'm in it to win the tournament so until I do I'll never be happy."
Mark Selby twice set a high mark for the tournament's highest break as he swept to a 13-3 victory over Hong Kong's Marco Fu.
Defending champion Selby made 139 in the 13th frame and followed up with a majestic 143 two frames later, looking every inch a worthy favourite for the title again. The previous top break had been 137 by Stuart Bingham, whose hopes were dashed of taking the £10,000 reward that comes with the achievement at the end of the event.
Selby also had a 132 break, and by winning with a session to spare he earned himself the evening off.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here