Snooker: Doherty And Fu Through
Doherty rolled back the years yesterday with a great win over Mark Williams. I fancied Williams to win this one as he looked to be getting some form back in the UK Championships. But it wasn't to be, Doherty was playing some of his best snooker in years to paddy power past Williams 6-2.
Williams went 2-0 up and was looking good with breaks of 118 and 69 but Doherty hit 6 of the best with breaks of 101, 89, 53 and 68. It great to see Doherty back on form again.
Williams is pretty negative about his future. He doesn't want to be playing in the qualifiers at Prestatyn next season and has said that if he's not in the top 32 he "probably won't stick around". This would be a sad loss for snooker. He's still a great player to watch and I still think he has a lot to give.
The Robertson Fu match was a cracking, long hard fought match. So much so, ...it made me late for work this morning. Well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! Like the Doherty Williams match, Robertson started out the strongest with breaks of 63 and 118. Robertson looked in really good form. But Fu showed then showed why he's won a ranking event this season and really got into some great break building of his own winning 4 frames in a row with breaks of 89, 71, 69 and 100.
Robertson had to dig really deep to stop Fu in his tracks but managed to win the next 2 to take it to 4-4. The next 2 were shared in what was turning out to be a great tactical game and so it went to the decider. The last frame was very cagey and could have gone either way, but Fu managed to win it on the final black. It was a really good match, ...one for the purists Clive Everton said.
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4 comments:
Hard to believe Williams might retire at the age of 32! I know he's had 2 poor seasons, but this is a player who's won 2 World Champs this decade and 18 tournaments during his career! He's never been the most technical of players, relying mostly on potting ability, but it's still been hard to believe the slide in his results. Still, he's likely to pick up a few ranking points yet this season, so I expect him to finish in the top 32.
I agree, it would be a terrible thing for him to retire at such an early age. He's a great talent and a great character. His personality is very laid back and I believe it's hard work to go to Prestatyn to qualify for ranking events. For people out there that think snooker is an easy life, ...get down to Prestatyn for a couple of days and you might be thinking again, ...it's not exactly the Ritz!
Williams is a pretty negative character actually. When he was younger he suffered from depression and to deal with this he developed extreme arrogance. You could see it in his interviews in the early part of his career when he used to say he was the best ever. Then he got depressed again as people reacted to this attitude, and went the other extreme where he didnt care or at least pretended he didn't, in any case, he's not really the laid back chap that you might think. These days he is more bored with snooker than anything. He's got his mills and his ferarri, why get out of bed for 5 hours of snooker practice? You only need to win a few matches per season to stay up, he can handle that with his natural ability, although he wont win anything. Getting results is all about practice no matter who you are. Don't listen to the Rocket, coming up to a tournament he practices hard, esp if there are faults in his game (cue action). Don't buy this "he's just a natural" talk, practice wins tournaments. Williams can't be bothered anymore, so he might as well pack it in. When he and Doherty were at their peaks 10 yrs ago, Williams was a strong favourite (no disrepect Ken ;) but Ken still practices these days therefore he gets the results now.
I saw an interview with Terry Griffiths on the BBC yesterday. Apparently Williams came out of the press conference saying it didn't go very well. Terry was hinting that Williams wouldn't retire if he dropped out of the top 32.
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