By elliott west
After all the shocks and thrills of day four, it would be madness to try to predict what could have happened in play today. With only a few players left in this year’s tournament today was all about weeding out the weakest and putting the best through to the semi-final stage.
Judd Trump was out on the baize again. This time playing Michael Holt who yesterday demolished Ding Junhui. Like in so many matches, sometimes the victory crown falls off too early. A win against Judd was a big ask for Michael but I know he has the ability and game to do it but for some reason he hasn’t achieved what he should have done in his career.
Judd turned on his winning taps in this match and gave Holt little opportunity. Before Michael could blink, he was already 4-0 down and a break of 74 spared him whitewash humiliation. However in the end, the mountain was too high for Michael to climb at this stage. Only needing one frame to win Judd did what he needed to do but thankfully this time the match didn’t have on the edge of my sofa as Trump’s last two matches have done. A cliffhanger is nice once in a while but not in every match. Judd moves forward and will play John Higgins next.
As I have said, John Higgins progresses but let’s not take it away from Stuart Bingham who has had an amazing run in this tournament. In this match, there was certainly not much fatigue on public display and Stuart produced breaks of 110 and 138 but this is where the buck stopped for Bingham and so Higgins raced ahead and took the match, 5-2. Bingham though can gain comfort from the fact that his game is coming back and on another day he could have beaten John. However snooker is all about the here and now and if you don’t turn up on the day the game will mentally scar you.
On the other half of the draw, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh played the resurgent David Gilbert but this again wasn’t going to go Gilbert’s way and rather than another final, his luck was going to run out in the quarter-finals. Gilbert threw everything at this match but his Thai opponent was slightly better on the day and the decider was deserved to break the the 4-4 deadlock in the match after the Thai fought back from 4-2 down.
Thepchaiya is a fantastic player to watch and when he plays well, his game is snooker poetry in motion. He attacks, break builds and has a pretty good safety game. Gilbert has just fallen short again and perhaps we are asking him too much to win a tournament at this stage but I still feel this is his moment and is precious. Let’s hope it doesn’t run out before he achieved his holy grail.
The other match was Kyren Wilson against Zhou Yuelong. Yuelong has come a long way in his short career and has proved this season that he can take on the best. This was a match that Wilson needed to win to bring back some confidence to his game that has sadly been lacking for a while and today was the lucky streak he needed. A fine 5-3 win got him over the line Wilson will now play Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the semi- final. A thrilling day of snooker can be looked forward to tomorrow!
