World Champion Zhao Xintong made it back-to-back tournament victories with a 10-7 defeat of four-time Crucible king John Higgins in the Sportsbet.io Players Championship final.
February has proven to be a trophy-laden month for the Chinese superstar. Zhao arrived in Telford off the back of beating compatriot Zhang Anda 10-6 in the final of the World Grand Prix in Hong Kong. He is the 14th player to win consecutive ranking events on the World Snooker Tour.
Zhao will head to Manchester for next month’s Sportsbet.io Tour Championship with the opportunity to become the first person to secure a clean sweep of all three Players Series tournaments in a single season.
This was Zhao’s fifth ranking event win and marks the continuation of a perfect conversion rate in finals. He is only the fourth player in snooker history to win his first five finals, following in the footsteps of Steve Davis, Mark Williams and Neil Robertson.
50-year-old Higgins misses out on the opportunity to be snooker’s oldest ever ranking event winner. He does become the second oldest ranking finalist, behind Rex Williams who was 53 in the 1986 Grand Prix title match, which he lost to Jimmy White.
Zhao began this week placed seventh in the Johnstone’s Paint World Rankings and the £150,000 top prize moves him to fifth. Despite picking up the £70,000 runner-up cheque, Higgins drops a place to sixth.
One positive for Higgins is he moves from 17th to 11th in the Sportsbet.io One Year list. With the BetVictor Welsh Open and the World Open to go he is currently in position to have a shot at defending his Tour Championship title, only the top 12 performers of the season qualify.
After a free-flowing afternoon of snooker, the pair came into this evening locked level at 4-4. In contrast, tonight’s play kicked off with a fragmented 47-minute frame which went the way of Higgins.
Zhao responded with breaks of 88 and 83 to take two of the next three frames and leave the match poised at 6-6 heading into the last interval of the tournament.
When play resumed, Zhao missed a long-range frame ball red which gave Higgins his chance. The Glaswegian slotted in a long ball and made 43 to steal on the black and move 7-6 in front.
Zhao responded by taking the 14th and then crafted the first century of the final, a run of 104, to move 8-7 ahead. He followed up with another big break of 126 to go one frame from the win at 9-7. Zhao crossed the line at the first chance of asking with a ruthless 92 to take the title.
“I’m over the moon. Honestly, I didn’t expect to adjust my form so quickly after coming back from Hong Kong. In fact, I was still dealing with jet lag for the first couple of days. I didn’t expect that my mindset would settle down so well afterwards. That gave me a lot of confidence in the later matches. Even though my opponents were very strong, I felt I could beat them. This result is something really special for me,” said 28-year-old Zhao.
“To hear players like Higgins and Ronnie O’Sullivan speak so highly of me — there’s really nothing that makes me happier than that. Of course I’ll keep working hard. There are still many tournaments ahead and I’ll try my best to win more titles.”
“In both finals, in Hong Kong and here in Telford, I personally didn’t think too much about the occasion. I think that’s one of the better aspects of how I’ve adapted my mentality. As long as I can play my own game, winning or losing isn’t the most important thing. I just focus on every single shot at the table. In that respect, I think I’ve done quite well recently.
“I haven’t thought too much about the World Championship. Even after winning this title, I still see it as simply the one of the upcoming tournaments. I’ll continue doing what I’ve been doing, stick to my routine, and look forward to the next event.”
Higgins paid tribute to Zhao’s brilliance: “I couldn’t pot a long ball all day and Zhao doesn’t really miss any long balls. The last three frames there were absolutely poetry in motion. I’m lucky to have my kids here and I can remember my dad saying he was lucky to see footballers like George Best and Jimmy Johnstone. My kids are lucky to see someone like Xintong. He is an absolute genius.“
There is nothing to add regarding the match. It was, as John Higgins put it, poetry in motion. The kind of match that doesn’t need commentary, that you may watch again on a quite late evening with music as a background. Extraordinary skills were on display – from both – and yet they made it look easy, naturally fluid.
Class from John Higgins in the post match interview. No bitterness whatsoever, instead saying that his kids were lucky to witness Zhao playing the way he did was classy and proof that, even after all these years in the job, he still loves his sport for the sheer beauty it can produce when played to near perfection.
One last thing though … I’m not very active on twitter anymore, but when I was more present on it, I had some disagreement with a guy who was obsessed with Chinese snooker players cheating and who regularly insisted that Zhao Xintong persistent cough was a tactic to disturb his opponents. Yesterday, Zhao was coughing a lot … including when himself was at the table. Surely he wasn’t trying to “disturb himself” out there? That would make no sense, would it? Actually, there are a few medical conditions that can trigger persistent cough, including a form of asthma. We have no right to know about players possible health conditions, it’s for them, and them only, to share such information IF they wish to share it. But we should refrain from judging without knowing all the facts.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 