Judd Trump Narrowly Misses Out As John Higgins Wins Snookers World Championships at the Crucible
Judd Trump came close to winning his first Snooker World Championship at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield, but it wasn’t to be for the 21 year old as the wizard John Higgins comes from behind to win 18-15.
35 year old John Higgins has had a remarkable year, he was banned for six months because of a failure to report an illegal approach by game fixers to authorities (he was cleared of deliberately throwing frames) but returned in November 2010 and has only lost 2 games on the snooker circuit since, winning 5 tournaments including the UK Championship and now the World Championship.
But it was the youngster, 21 year old Judd Trump who stole the show. His brand of ‘pot everything’ snooker has won him legions of fans around the world at this years snooker World Championship, including many of the games great players, past and present.
If there has been a possible pot on at the table then Judd Trump has always taken it on, and mostly succeeded. His potting percentage over the course of the tournament was over 90% and when you consider the difficulty of some of the shots that he was taking on it was incredible.
He likes to hit the cue ball with power and he can generate alot of it, combined with his technique we would often see the cue ball bananaring around the table, bending this way and that.
One the first day of play Trump was in control building a 10-7 frame lead over Higgins. The pair were even over the next 4 frames with a couple of large breaks from Trump of 104 and 99.
The whole game seemed to pivot however on a missed blue from Trump, when it had seemed likely that Trump would take the frame, Higgins suddenly took 5 frames in a row. Taking advantage of what was sometimes cruel luck for Trump as the balls started landing in all the wrong places as he tried to break build.
Trump eventually got back into his winning stride again and evened things up again at 14-14.
The last few frames were a tense affair with the match always tightly balanced, the pressure was getting to both players as they started to make mistakes on routine shots.
Eventually though, it was Higgins superior safety play that allowed him to get the snookers he needed in the final frame to give him the opportunity to win his 3rd World Championship title.
Even though he lost, it was obvious the future is bright for Judd Trump and it doesn’t take a psychic to know that the Englishman will be World Champion one day soon. The snooker world has a new sensation.
Photo: Los Cardinalos
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