Barry Hawkins is into Sunday afternoon’s Welsh Open final after an excellent win over Wu Yize this afternoon.
Hawkins will be hoping it is 13th time lucky, when he takes to the baize on Sunday afternoon against either five time Welsh Open champion and snooker legend John Higgins or Jack Lisowski.
The Hawk will be hoping to return back to Kent with the fifth ranking title of his career.
He came into the week with no expectations and has soared and played some excellent snooker to get to the final.
Wu stormed back from 4-1 down to 4-4 and looked sure to go ahead but a missed black on a break of 59 proved the key moment of the contest, as Hawkins regained the initiative and took the last two frames. The 46-year-old Londoner is into a 13th ranking final and has the chance to win a first title since the 2023 European Masters. In Sunday’s best-of-17 final he will meet John Higgins or Jack Lisowski for the Ray Reardon Trophy and a top prize of £100,000.
Before this week it had been a season of few highlights for world number 14 Hawkins as he had failed to reach a semi-final. And his chances looked slim when he arrived in North Wales as a back injury left him on the brink of pulling out. He battled through the pain in an opening 4-3 win over David Lilley, and went on to knock out Mark Williams and Neil Robertson in a superb run. He is into the Welsh Open final for the second time, having lost the first 9-7 to Higgins in 2018.
Guaranteed £45,000, Hawkins has already moved from 15th to 13th on the Sportsbet.io One Year rankings, and victory tomorrow would almost certainly earn him a place in the Sportsbet.io Tour Championship in Manchester in four weeks time.
Former Crucible finalist Hawkins dominated a scrappy opening frame and he led 53-0 in the next when he went in-off attempting safety, and China’s 22-year-old Wu punished him with a fine 73 clearance. In frame three, Wu trailed 42-18 when he missed a tough black to a baulk corner, letting Hawkins in for a run of 42 to regain the lead. The Englishman went on to make breaks of 72 and 66 to stretch his lead to 4-1.
Early in frame six, Hawkins miscued in trying to pot a red with the rest, and Wu’s run of 83 gave him a foothold. Just 18 minutes later the tie was in the balance as Wu fired breaks of 74 and 122 for 4-4. Frame nine was reracked after a long stalemate, then Wu converted a long red and looked in full control until his surprising miss on a routine black on 59. Hawkins ran out of position on 37, but later converted a long pot on the yellow and cleared for 5-4. The next was a fragmented affair but Wu failed to pot a ball and runs of 24 and 25 helped Hawkins crawl over the winning line.
“Wu threw everything at me from 4-1,” said Hawkins, who was runner-up in the UK Championship and German Masters last season. “I played well up to 4-1, then when I miscued with the rest, that sparked him into life. I was just sitting in my seat, he was potting unbelievable balls and didn’t look like missing. He looks amazing when he starts doing that, the way he hits the ball.
“To get the chance at 4-4 when he missed the black from nowhere, that was a relief, and winning that frame settled me down. I felt good today, it would be nice to knock a few centuries in, hopefully I can do that in the final. It would be brilliant to win, that’s what we are all trying to do from the start of the season. If you get the chance you have to try to grab it with both hands. I have been trying hard and knocking on the door for a while, I came so close last year.”
Image courtesy of World Snooker