After 126 matches in the UK Championship we have reached our final and what a finale it promises to be on Sunday when arguably the best two players in the modern game meet as the world champion Mark Selby meets Ronnie O’Sullivan over the best of 19 frames.
The title and £170,000 is up for grabs in this final inside the Barbican Centre in York as these two men meet for the first time since the Welsh Open in February.
Ronnie O’Sullivan
O’Sullivan had cruised through this tournament but he was made to battle in the semi-final when a blitz from Marco Fu sent him 5-4 clear of the Rocket but O’Sullivan held his nerve and then cranked into genius mode to come through a 6-5 winner to take his place is a second successive major final having lost to John Higgins in the Champion of Champions final last month.
You would be lying if you said the Rocket had been on full power this week so far but at the same time he showed he still has pure class in his locker with the 130 break he notched up to take care of Fu on Saturday night. If he is to win this final he will have to play an awful lot better than anything we have seen so far this week.
Mark Selby
The world champion has come through a tough part of the draw and he might be all the better for it in this final. In the quarter final he had to come through an absolute epic with the man of the moment John Higgins and having outlasted him he proved far too good for Shaun Murphy in the semi-final.
I think Selby has played some of the best snooker I’ve seen from him in quite some time in this tournament. He has banged in a number of centuries and high breaks and looks to be cueing as well as I’ve seen. Usually he gets better as the tournament goes on and he has done that. If he is at his best this week in this final he has a great chance.
Head to Head
These two great players have met on 25 previous occasions and O’Sullivan has a 16-8 lead with the one draw in the league. This is the eighth time they will have met in a final and it is Selby who holds a narrow 4-3 advantage in their past finals.
O’Sullivan has won both their meetings this year but the most famous match between the two in recent times was the 2014 World Championship final, a final which Selby came from the clouds to win 18-14, a match which you could tell hurt O’Sullivan for a long time.
Betting
This is all set up for a brilliant final but let us not kid ourselves into thinking this is anything but a 50/50 match which could go either way. It could literally come down to one roll of the ball given the quality of the two players.
There are a couple of reasons I’m taking Mark Selby here. The prices on the two men are ridiculous. I take it with a pinch of salt that O’Sullivan things he is the outsider in this match. That is mind games extraordinaire but I don’t think he is the clear favourite he usually is and nothing like as clear as the odds suggest here.
The other reason to take Selby is I don’t see Selby playing badly enough for O’Sullivan to win easily and you would think the closer this final is the more it favours Selby. It could even go the distance this and would you want to oppose Selby, the master of brinkmanship? I wouldn’t. Whether he wins it big or narrowly I think Selby has played the better snooker coming into the week and 11/8 is too big to turn down.
Tips
WON – Back M.Selby to beat R.O’Sullivan for a 4/10 stake at 2.38 with William Hill
Back him here:
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