Hawkins conquers Riga Open trophy
Barry Hawkins beat Tom Ford
4-1 to lift the 2015 Riga Open trophy and start the new snooker season with his
right foot.In a full packed arena with a crowd entertained by a very loud and funny MC, Barry managed to cash no less than 25,000 euros and bring his contribution to raising the popularity of snooker outside the UK's borders.
Starting his day with a similar 4-1 victory against Michael White, followed by a 4-2 against Alan McManus and another 4-1 against Graeme Dott, "The Hawk" from Kent met his rival, Tom Ford in the warm applause of the audience.
Ford on the other hand, had begun his day with a 4-2 scoreline obtained by playing Rory McLeod, a thrilling 4-3 victory against Matt Selt (match dramatically won on the black!) and 4-1 against Ben Woollaston.
The final started with
Tom's wonderfully cued 67 break which was enough to give him the opener, but
sadly enough for him things stopped developing during the following frames.Hawkins was sure to respond with a break of 65 in no time and take full advantage of Tom's missed black during the third frame (down on 40), thus the scoreline went 2-1.
A pretty scrappy forth frame was showing Hawkins as favourite to win, thanks to a 57 break, but when the 2012 Australian Goldfields Open champion gave 7 penalty points, due to a miss, and left a free ball, things looked bring and shiny for his opponent who needed three snookers up until a second ago.
Still, Ford overcut the black and minutes later made the same mistake as his opponent, granting penalty points and a free ball. It was 3-1.
The last frame was a more
fluent one, Hawkins using a break of 62 to seal his victory thus proudly winning
the 2015 Riga Open title. Nice touch, especially since his last trophy was the 2014 Players Tour Championship Grand Final. Well done, Hawk!
Plus, he gets a place in the Champion of Championships tournament!
LIVE snooker will return to us at the end of this month (26-30 August), as we travel to Germany for the ET 2 - aka. Paul Hunter Classic, but until then we also have the Shanghai Masters qualifying rounds, taking place as Barnsley between 5-9 August.
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