A busy week of snooker in the Northern Ireland Open concludes on Sunday when the two-session final takes place in Belfast. We have two surprise finalists in the form of Mark King and Barry Hawkins but one of them will win the title and walk away with a cool £100,000 prize which could make quite a difference to whoever wins it.
Mark King
You have to give all the credit in the world to Mark King this week. While he hasn’t faced what you would call a genuine top name yet he has beaten all of those in front of him with the minimum of fuss and that is all anyone can be expected to do. It hasn’t always been pretty and I’m sure he would be the first to admit that but it certainly has been effective.
This will be King’s first ever ranking event title if he can win here. It is his first final for 12 years so this will be a big occasion for the veteran left hander. He will need to handle the occasion but if he can settle into the final early on you get the feeling he might be hard to unsettle.
Barry Hawkins
Until the semi-final on Saturday night there is no doubt that the player of this tournament had been Barry Hawkins but we saw the infallible side of him in the last four when he was safely ahead of Anthony Hamilton, a man who he should be putting away in style but in the end he fell over the line and he gave the game away with how relieved he was to do so.
Hawkins lost five frames in the semi-final which is more than he had lost in the entire tournament combined up until then so he might just be feeling the weight of expectation at being the favourite to win the tournament from here. He has won titles before which is a positive but he’ll need to handle the expectation better here.
Head to Head
In the 10 meetings these two have had the honours are even at 5-5 although Mark King has won the last two matches which might be significant especially as they were as recently as last year. This will be the first time they have met over the two session distance.
Betting
Anyone who can have faith in Hawkins at 1/3 after what we saw from him in the semi-final is a much gutsier man than I am. He has a history of blowing leads in big matches and he nearly did it again there so I’m running for the hills when it comes to backing him.
In fact I’m going to take his opponent in this match. Mark King might not win but we saw everything we needed to see on Saturday night to know that he is going to get the chance to stay close to Hawkins and who knows King might fall over the line. I’m not expecting a classic here. There is too much at stake for both of them for that but I expect King to be competitive and make it to seven frames if not the full nine.
Tips
WON – Back M.King (+2.5 frames) to beat B.Hawkins for a 4/10 stake at 2.10 with Titanbet
Back him here:
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