2016 World Grand Prix - Epic win for Murphy

Shaun Murphy beat Stuart Bingham 10-9 to win an epic battle of cues and lift the marvellous World Grand Prix trophy. 

Although he started the final by taking a 4-1 lead over his opponent, Bingham managed to turn tables on him at 6-4, before "the Magician" performed a comeback and then ... the thriller begun.

It was with top breaks of 40 and 38 that Murphy was starting his journey towards the victory line, which also meant he was taking the first two frames of the final of this year's World Grand Prix.

Bingham responded with a 68 break to break the ice and win his first frame of the match, but the mid-session interval was finding the runner-up of last year World Championship in control at 3-1, after the 15-minutes break Murphy extending his lead at 4-1 thanks to a 58 break.

Here's when things started changing, as the reigning world champion begin his comeback, runs of 55, 93 and 74 ending the first session with a scoreline that was favouring Bingham all the way: it was 5-4.

And things didn't seem to look too bright for Murphy when he returned for the second and last session of the match, as his opponent went on and extended his lead at 6-4. 

Could this be a strange case of history repeating itself? Could this be a re-match of the 2015 World Championship final? Murphy thought otherwise and fought back, breaks of 55, 37 and 35 bringing the much longed-for balance of the match, 6-6.

Bingham was sure to maintain his leading position and so, just before the mid-session interval, he used a top break of 45 to go 7-6 in front.

A quarter of an hour later pressure was floating into the air, as Murphy fired a 94 break to draw level and added a 48 one to get his nose back in front at 8-7.

Frame 16 meant the world to Bingham who won it dramatically on the last black to make the scoreboard go 8-8. This was game on, once again!

A break of 120 was putting Shaun one away from the victory, but a match like this one couldn't have ended like that. It needed a decider and that's exactly what Bingham did by winning the next frame.

The last frontier was conquered in just two visits and with a top break of 47, thus meaning that Murphy won his first major ranking title in two years.

Over the moon with his victory, Murphy said that he found it a bit difficult to play in such a long match because he hasn't reached a final of a major ranking event since last year's World Championship (where, he lost 18-15 to Bingham), so he kind of forgot how these things work.

Needless to say that he figured it out in the end, plus his "magical" shoes seem to have acted like some sort of lucky charm, as he himself admitted ;-)

This concludes our week in Llandudno, the next stop being the Players Championship from Manchester, which kicks off on March 22.