The last snooker trophy of the decade will be won on Sunday when Jack Lisowski takes on Mark Selby for the Stephen Hendry Trophy and the Scottish Open title inside the Emirates Arena up in Glasgow.
The two men will meet over the best of 17 frames across two sessions of play with the third Home Nations event of the season on the line for the two Englishmen. Both men look in good form so we should be in for a great final.
Jack Lisowski
After a positive week, Jack Lisowski will have another shot at winning a first ranking event title and really launching his career to the heights everyone thinks that it should be at. He has been one of the underachievers of the game for quite a while now but he can put that all to bed if he can get over the line here. He is playing well enough to do that, so it is all about whether he has the mental strength to hold himself together and get the job done.
Lisowski has seen off three very good opponents to make it through to this final. John Higgins might not have brought his best game with him in the last 16, but that was not the case with Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the quarter final or Mark Allen in the last four. Lisowski has got better with his scoring as the week has gone on and even won a safety battle with Allen in the deciding frame of their semi-final which shows that his game is developing nicely.
Mark Selby
There are not many players who have won more than one of these Home Nations events since they were drawn up, but Mark Selby actually has the chance to win a second one in three having won the English Open earlier in the season. A win here would put him in all the big events to come in the second-half of the campaign so he isn’t going to need a lot more motivation than that. It would turnaround his poor recent record in the UK too by his standards.
Selby hasn’t been at his best in this tournament but he has beaten Ronnie O’Sullivan and thrashed Dave Gilbert in his last two matches to make it into this final. Even when he isn’t firing on all cylinders we know that Selby can guts matches out. He will take confidence from the way he played in that English Open final earlier in the campaign. He was flawless that day and if he has that with him here he’ll be tough to beat.
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Head to Head
If you include a couple of Championship League meetings then these two have met on 10 previous occasions and it might come as a surprise to some that it is Jack Lisowski who has a 6-4 lead in them battles overall. He only leads 31-27 in the frame count however so a lot of their matches are quite tight, regardless of which way they end up going. This will be the first time they have met in a final of any kind and their maiden battle in a match which contains two sessions so just how much history means here remains to be seen.
Betting
The best player on the week doesn’t always win the tournament but I do think Jack Lisowski has a good chance here. He is definitely overpriced at 2/1 based on what he has shown in the competition so far. I was unsure about him at the start of the week but the longer it has gone on, the more his best game has come out, and there was a certain assurance about him in his win over Mark Allen in the semi-final.
Mark Selby has all the experience in the world but Lisowski, like his good mate Judd Trump, often makes his matches about himself. If he plays well he often wins and that is what I expect him to do here. He can mix it in the safety department now which will create chances for him in this final. Selby doesn’t look on top of his game so I’m going to take the head to head record between these two to give us a guide which points to an overpriced Lisowski at 2/1.
Tips
Back J.Lisowski to beat M.Selby for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Coral
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