The last match in the Home Nations series this season should be a cracking contest when Stuart Bingham takes on Neil Robertson in the Welsh Open final inside the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff on Sunday.
The finalists dominated their semi-final matches so there should be no fatigue issues and with the final being the best of 17 frames across two sessions some excellent snooker should flow once they have settled into their work.
Sign up to 888sport before the big FA Cup tie on Monday night to get 10/1 on Chelsea to win OR 20/1 on Man Utd to win! Click the banner above to take your enhanced odds. New accounts only. 18+ T&Cs apply.
Stuart Bingham
Having struggled so far in 2019, Stuart Bingham has really found himself this week and has been the player of the tournament so far. Having made three centuries in a match earlier in the campaign, he slammed in another four in an emphatic semi-final victory and is scoring about as well as ever. If he can continue to do that here then he is going to have every chance of picking up a second Home Nations event of the season having already picked up the English Open.
If there is a concern for Bingham ahead of this final it could be that he hasn’t really been tested yet this week. That won’t matter if he gets ahead and dominates this final but you’ve got to think he will struggle to dominate the Australian, so what he can find in the tight, pressurised moments may well decide his fate in this final.
Neil Robertson
Unlike Bingham, Robertson has had to come through a couple of titanic tussles this week but they seem to have served him well because he was dominant and emphatic in his semi-final victory over Hossein Vafaei, and that should have tuned him up nicely to launch an assault on what would be his second title of the campaign after he opened up the season with the Riga Masters title.
The Australian has scored well when he has got himself in this week but he has had the game taken to him and faltered on a couple of occasions. He usually gets better in the business end of a tournament and that may well serve him well in this final. He has shown he has what it takes when behind this week so he will not necessarily need to win this final from the front.
Head to Head
These two have met on 16 occasions with Bingham having had the better of things overall. He has won 10 matches to the six victories of Robertson, but the tide has turned recently towards the Australian. He has won their last two matches without dropping a frame, meaning he has won the last 11 frames between the two men. That has cut Bingham’s frame advantage in their past meetings down to 54-47. This will be the first time the two men have met in a final of any kind.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Betting
Neil Robertson has dominated the previous two matches between these two men but I don’t see him dominating this one. Bingham is playing far too well for that to happen in my eyes so I see a relatively tight final. Both men are playing some decent stuff so I would be surprised if either man has it in them to run clear here.
The way the pair are scoring and the belief I have that this final will be close I think the obvious bet is over 3.5 centuries in this one. The main table has played on the easier side of things all week and both these men have filled their boots on it throughout the tournament. They are both heavy scorers and make plenty of centuries. They can make four more between them here.
Tips
Back Over 3.5 centuries for a 4/10 stake at 2.20 with Bet365
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2019
