China’s Ding Junhui has captured the third World Series event with a 6-4 win over Ken Doherty tonight, click below for a full match report…
Ding Junhui 6-4 Ken Doherty
Ding Junhui continued his improving form tonight by winning the final of the third World Series event tonight in Warsaw against Ireland’s Ken Doherty.
The match started brightly as both scored heavily to share the first four frames, the highlight being a cool 92 break from Ding just before the interval.
From this point though the match became a little scrappy as both began to miss a few easy shots. Also playing a part was the extremely quick table that appeared to be causing both players problems with their positional shots.
When play resumed, Ding looked as if he would lead the match for the first time but a missed pink gave Ken the chance to play a snooker behind the black which proved to be too tough for Ding to escape from and leave safe. Ding levelled the match again at 3-3 though as both began to really struggle, missing several good chances to take the frame.
The next two frames were again shared before Ding finally went into the lead at 5-4. This followed a dramatic frame where at one point Ken needed a snooker, which he actually got to leave himself needing to clear the table to take the frame. Unfortunately for him though he overhit the final blue and left himself a tricky pink which he missed and left waiting over the pocket for a relieved Ding.
Frame ten proved to be a similar story for Ken as he looked certain to force a decider, making a break of 63 to leave himself needing just one more red for 5-5. Unfortunately for Ken though he missed it, leaving Ding with a chance to win it there and then. Although he made hard work of the colours, he made some super pots on the green, brown and particularly the pink to seal the match 6-4.
As I suggested in my semi-final round-up, Ding has played the best snooker all weekend and I think he deserved the win tonight. It is early days but at the Grand Prix and in the World Series this weekend, he has looked more like his old self and maybe he is just beginning to sort things out. Hopefully that will be the case as I think a strong Ding Junhui would be a great asset to the snooker tour.
Ken meanwhile will be disappointed not to have won the match, but hopefully his performances this weekend will have given him a confidence boost and he can go into the next ranking event in Bahrain in a positive frame of mind. He could really do with a long run in the tournament so hopefully this will get his season started.
Ken Doherty 4-6 Ding Junhui 62(61)-25, 0-79(71), 61(45)-29, 0-92(92), 74-21, 18-60, 95(56)-0, 20-74, 55-79(65), 63(46)-64(64)