A Robertson v. O'Sullivan Welsh Open final

00:45:00 Ramona Dragomir 1 Comments

Seems like such a long, long way since this year's Welsh Open started, but here we are in the latest stages of the tournament with only two big names remaining to fight the final battle: Neil Robertson and Ronnie O'Sullivan.

Saturday's semi-finals proved to be quite tense and involved, as it happened during the week, lots of big breaks and tremendous shots. Maybe the scorelines don't tell the entire story of how good and tight these matches where.

Neil Robertson met Mark Allen on his way to the final, the Aussie recording a 6-4 victory despite experiencing a tough start.

Breaks of 77 and 55 were awarding Allen the first two frames of the match, but while he was on his way to add one more, the ref in charge Terry Camilleri spotted a foul, this stopping the Northern Irishman contribution to 56.

This also meant a life-line for Robertson who cleared with a 49 to win his first frame of the day and added runs of 54 and 51 to draw level at the interval.

The 2010 world champion continued his "conquista" after the 15-minutes break with marvellous breaks of 75, 82 and 72 to go just one away from victory, at 5-2.

But Allen kept the match alive a few more minutes as he pulled back two consecutive frames with a top break of 124 before Robertson had the chance to wrapped things up and close the match at 6-4.

The second semi-final, ardently awaited as it featured the "man of the tournament" Ronnie O'Sullivan proved to be quite a surprise as "The Rocket's" opponent, Joe Perry pun on a pretty tough fight.

It all started in a pretty unusual way, the opening frame being a genuine scrapper, but in the end it went Ronnie's way, who was therefore breaking the ice.

But when Perry fought back with an outstanding 139 clearance, it was becoming pretty clear this was going to be an interesting match.

Ronnie replayed with a 124 during frame three, but Perry didn't feel intimidated and scored a 92 to make the scoreline go 2-2 at the interval.

When returning into the arena "The Rocket" detached himself with breaks of 101 and 94, but Perry prolonged the suspense with a top of 56 to trail 5-3.

The next frame was all in Ronnie's hands, although in all fairness he did missed a pretty easy black early in the frame, but soon recovered to close with a perfect 78 break for a final scoreline of 6-3.

Tomorrow, the final battle will begin and all the odds say it's going to be a genuine cracker!

1 comments:

Unknown said...

I think if Ronnie wins tomorrow it will go down as one of the greatest performances in a ranking event ever.