For the second straight year the Masters final will be contested between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby after the latter defeated Stephen Maguire 6-3 tonight…
At 3-3 the match looked finely poised and like it might be closer than I had anticipated as Stephen more than held his own and in the fourth frame equalled Neil Robertson’s tournament high break of 140.
From that point however the errors from the Scot’s cue began to increase and with Selby playing one-visit snooker, he was severely punished as the Jester from Leicester moved into his third consecutive final at the Wembley Arena.
Mark probably played as well tonight as he has done all week and if he can continue to score heavily tomorrow will cause O’Sullivan problems. That said, I probably fancied Mark’s chances more twelve months ago )when Ronnie was struggling with a cue that he did not like), than I do this time around and as we all now know he could not win that day. Hopefully the match will be closer than their recent match at the UK Championship but ultimately I feel that the result will be the same…
For Maguire though it is another disappointing result against one of the top players as his season fails to quite ignite. I like Stephen but since his excellent 2007/8 season in which he won two ranking events it has been apparent that his temperament has not been as strong as it might be and sometimes from his post-match comments in press conferences he comes across as hating being out there at the moment. Hopefully he will be able to go on a good run sooner rather than later and re-establish himself as one of the players to beat…