by elliott west
People, including myself have been critical of Ding Junhui over his general performance in snooker in the last couple of years. This has been self-evident in his drought of match wins and tournament trophies. Ding hasn’t won any silverware since 2017 and last won the UK Championship ten years ago. Many reasons have been banded around, including being a new father and the strains of Chinese interest on expectations to do well.
However this year’s UK Championship has finally put this sniping to bed as the Chinese player pulled off one of his greatest victories, beating Stephen Maguire in the final 10-6. This wasn’t a fluke and was a result of deconstructing his entire game, surgically stitching the best parts back together with modifications to his faults. A dissection that was achieved by putting his game under the microscope on the practice table and probably looked at footage of his previous matches trying to find the root causes of those loses. Ding, was until yesterday an easy target for any of the other 127 players to beat, displayed negative body language and retracted into his shell when the tide of defeat approached him.
These traits have finally been purged and we can once again see the player who first burst onto the snooker scene as a youthful talent! His run in the UK Championship knocked out favourites such as Ronnie O’Sullivan. A win that I am sure was the catalyst for him to actually start believing that he could win this title. Similarly Yan Bingtao who has previously won the Riga Masters this season, proved no match for Ding and was described as a win over the young pretender.
In the final itself Stephen Maguire, another underachiever must have thought he had a good chance of winning this title after his 6-0 whitewash of Mark Allen in the semi-final. This was proven to be false… Maguire who is recovering from a foot injury sustained by a recent fall in the shower in China, couldn’t match Ding and a 4-0 lead was crafted by snatching the first frame and further breaks of 56, 105 and 128 for the lead. This fatal blow was probably the root cause of his defeat and despite getting six frames in the match, he was always playing catch up like the tortoise trying to chase the hare.
Junhui hardly put a foot wrong in the match and was able to auto correct his errors with high break building when he was let back in. When Maguire had a surge and brought the match to almost level pegging, he missed his opportunity to tie the match at 4-4 by missing a blue to the middle pocket! Ding then seized his chance and made a 66 break and went on to to lead by two frames. There were simmers of talent by Maguire as the match progressed but in the end the mountain was too high to climb for the Scot and it was Ding’s break of 131 in the fifteenth frame and a 103 break in the last frame that made him a deserved winner.
Ding can now travel to Glasgow with his head held high for this week’s Scottish Open and will become the new favourite in events after poor performances in York by Ronnie O’Sullivan and Judd Trump. He will also breathe a sigh of relief that Ronnie has withdrawn from the Masters in January. This was initially put out as a media report of withdrawing for “personal reasons” but was later rebuffed by Ronnie, saying that he wanted to give someone else the chance to win it.
Ding will also be spurred on by the announcement yesterday of a deal to stage a new tournament in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with a ten year deal and a prize of £500,000 from next October.
