John Higgins and Rory McLeod (finally) finished their match this afternoon, John winning 13 frames to 7. It was a scrappy affair, John never really looked comfortable and they both missed quite a few pots. Both players rarely wanted to give the other guy an easy chance and thus the match was turtling along. Rory obviously playing slowly in an attempt to bore John to death and losing rythm along the way, resulting in a lovely soup of overall bad snooker. Well, if you love the defensive snooker and enjoys shots being played at greater than or equal to half a minute then this is it, otherwise you might not fancy it. Fine, Rory brushed it off as the game is called snooker and it’s not all about potting, he says more than 50% of the frames are decided on the tactical game. Sure, maybe he’s right generally speaking, but this match was proof of exactly the opposite. If you plan on winning in snooker, you’ll also need to pot balls and this was the part Rory failed to do. Anyway, hopefully John can shrug this off and prepare properly for his next opponent which will be either Shaun Murphy or Ronnie O’Sullivan. What a treat!
In other news Mark Selby completed his 13-4 victory over Stephen Hendry today with a 70+ something break, thus they were only in about 12 minutes on the baize this afternoon. Selby made a new Crucible record in that match making 6 centuries, which appearently nobody has done before there. I didn’t watch much of that match seeing as I have a habit of changing to the other table whenever Mark is in, so can’t really comment much on the game itself. From what I read it seemed Mark was playing fairly well making centuries and high breaks from left to right. Stephen is even considering retireing from snooker now, and I can’t blame him, I don’t think anybody likes losing to Selby. Even less at his own domain and by that scoreline. We’ll just have to wait and see, but to be completely objective I don’t think it looks to bright. Stephen only wants to continue if he knows he has a chance at the world title, but now he’s not sure he can do it. At least he’ll think it over over the summer so perhaps some time off and a few golf swings will do some wonders.
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