All 4 Betway UK Championship quarter-finals happen on Friday at York’s Barbican Centre and because the event enters the enterprise finish of the occasion there appears to be like to be one thing for everybody within the enviornment.
The afternoon matches see world No1 and reigning world champion Mark Selby tackle the in-form John Higgins – and one other former UK winner in Shaun Murphy face younger Belgian prospect Luca Brecel.
Higgins doesn’t have to fret in regards to the Christmas buying this 12 months having received about £360,000 within the final month alone, after huge wins on the China Championship and the Champion of Champions.
He’s in search of a fourth UK title and a twenty ninth rating title in all, one that might put him clear in second place behind solely Stephen Hendry and one forward of Steve Davis and Ronnie O’Sullivan. Higgins, as Hendry has stated in commentary this week, is among the gamers not terrified of profitable titles in fast succession and has said he plans to trip the wave so long as it lasts.
Selby will in fact present a serious highway block to these ambitions. No1 now for an unimaginable 94 weeks beneath a fluid and rolling system, it’s onerous to see how he might be knocked off the highest earlier than February’s two-year mark, and if he wins a second UK title it appears to be like nearly assured till the World Championship at then Crucible. Whoever wins this one will know they’ve a fantastic probability of one other title.
In the meantime alongside them the 2008 UK winner Murphy will tackle Brecel, whose greatest run up to now got here on this 12 months’s German Masters on the Tempodrom in Berlin when he reached the ultimate, solely to lose to Martin Gould.
Two conferences between the pair spring immediately to thoughts. There was a quarter-final right here in 2012, when Brecel, simply 17, actually ought to have received earlier than happening 6-5. He claims he’s a greater participant and extra rounded particular person now – and a latest 4-0 win over Murphy in Northern Eire, when the senior participant was blown away and managed simply eight factors in complete, was a critical warning.
There’s sure to be a cracking ambiance within the night for the O’Sullivan v Mark Williams match, together with Higgins the opposite two of the well-known class of 1992 of their twenty fifth seasons as professionals nonetheless typically exhibiting the children how it’s executed.
Williams has received the UK twice, however the final of these got here 14 years in the past, and he has not received a rating title so as to add to the 18 within the bag of any sort for nearly six years. At one stage Williams had not overwhelmed O’Sullivan, so typically his nemesis, in a rating event for 12 years though that sequence was ended on the Worldwide Championship in 2014.
That they had a fantastic match on the Masters this 12 months, received 6-5 by O’Sullivan, who’s but to win a title this season after shedding finals in Romania and Coventry. O’Sullivan has made some headlines this week and never only for dropping solely three frames thus far in 4 matches, however you would need to make him a robust favorite and Williams should play significantly better than towards Liam Highfield to have a sensible probability of victory.
Marco Fu, who performs Wales’s Jamie Jones, stays within the high 16, extra by dint of a Crucible semi-final this 12 months than something he has executed this season. The Hong Kong participant stays one thing of an enigma, his undoubted class and pedigree compromised by an enormous hole between his greatest and his worst.
However it is a good draw for each of them, with Jones, who emphatically knocked out Ding Junhui right here, not absolutely kicking on from his nice run to the quarters of the worlds a couple of years again. The 28-year-old is a fan of scorching yoga, methods championed by the likes of Andy Murray and Ryan Giggs. It’s a stretch to suppose both of those will raise the trophy, however a semi-final place may be very a lot inside their vary.
