A MAGNIFICENT seventh World Championship final beckons for John Higgins, yet he may not have made it at all but for accidentally leaving his television on.
Higgins’ quest for a fifth world title at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre is still on track after he saw off a valiant Kyren Wilson 17-13 in their semi-final.
Despite Wilson, 26, having reached the last four for the first time, there was little to choose between the men for much of the match – the 42-year-old Scot leading 5-3, 9-7 and 13-11 at the end of the first three sessions before finally pulling away at the death.
Yet Higgins says it was only a moment of chance between Friday’s second and third sessions that finally saw him produce his best snooker.
“I needed to find something on Friday afternoon and it was a bit of luck in the end that I did,” said Higgins. “I went back to the apartment between sessions. I’d left the TV on and it was the second session of this match that was showing. My highest break was less than 50 in those frames and I was just delighted to be 9-7 in front.
“I was watching myself, and I’ve got a long back-swing anyway, but I felt it was far too long. I’ve not got a coach, so I’ve got to see for myself when technical things are going wrong and I said ‘that’s not right’. So, I put my clothes on, came over to the Crucible and had 45 minutes practice. I needed to try to find something, I shortened up my back-swing and I felt I played great after that. I felt I needed to do that to give myself confidence heading into the final sessions and thankfully it worked.”
After his moment of inspiration, Higgins maintained his four-frame advantage over Wilson in the evening before hitting his stride yesterday.
The Englishman did win the first frame of the afternoon with a run of 96 to close to 13-12 but the veteran then reeled off four of the next five – breaks of 136, 100 and 98 the highlights – to get over the line.
Higgins will now have a chance to go one better than 12 months ago – when he lost 18-15 to Mark Selby – in the best-of-35 final beginning today.
While the Scot is coming towards the end of a storied snooker career, Wilson appears to be the future of the sport and acquitted himself well during his first appearance on the one-table set-up at the Crucible.
Higgins’ veteran nous ultimately saw him over the line but he was impressed by his resilient young foe, even comparing him to three-time world champion Selby.
“I absolutely saw comparisons to Mark Selby,” Higgins said. “I said to him at the end that he reminded me of Selby in 2007 [when Higgins beat him 18-13 in the World Championship final] and you look at what Selby has gone on to do. They’re different players but you just get an aura off them. Kyren thought he was going to win and he thought he was going to pot everything, which is quite tough to play against.
“No matter where you leave the balls, you think he’s going to pot them. Throughout the match he was knocking the long ones in. He’s a great ambassador and a great young man and he’ll be back here. He’s maybe not as tight as some other players but that will come. He put me under real pressure but he just couldn’t get level with me.
“He’s a guy who learns every single time he plays and I expect big things from him here in the future.”
As for Higgins’ immediate future, he has four sessions – and potentially 35 frames – of snooker over the next two days to try to match Ronnie O’Sullivan as a five-time world champion. And the 42-year-old allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation two decades after his first world title win.
“It’s great to reach another final. I’m just proud,” said Higgins. “I’m proud that 20 years after I won my first world title, I’m sitting here in another final ready to compete. I’ve still got plenty left in the tank for the next couple of days. My form came at the end of the match but I’ll need to start off a hell of a lot better than that.”
Watch the snooker World Championship live on Eurosport and Eurosport Player with Colin Murray and analysis from Ronnie O’Sullivan, Jimmy White and Neal Foulds.
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