Peter Ebdon
Ebdon defeated Scotland’s Stephen Maguire by ten frames to nine in an epic final, lasting an incredible 7 hours and 28 minutes.
The £75,000 win represents a remarkable turnaround in Ebdon’s fortunes, as he looked in danger of dropping out of the world’s top 32 earlier this season.
Ebdon won his ninth ranking event, and first since the 2009 China Open, by outlasting Maguire in the final which finished at nearly 1am at Beijing University.
The 41 year old was 5-1 up after the first session when Maguire bravely battled back to 8-8 in a tense concluding session of sometimes brilliant, sometimes tactical snooker, but the veteran Ebdon never fell behind during the entire match. Of Maguire’s efforts, Ebdon said, “There’s a part of me that feels very sorry for Stephen, because he made a tremendous comeback, and he was very strong, and he put me under a lot of pressure. Fortunately, I potted a really good red at the end, and managed to crawl my way back into it. I missed too many balls today, and gave him too many chances.”
The 2002 world champion notched four century breaks of 107, 124, and two 103s during the match while Maguire, the 2008 China Open winner, scored runs of 53, 84, 98, 65, 70 and 97.
But it was Ebdon, who has dedicated himself to a strict vegan diet in a bid for fresh impetus, who captured the trophy. He jumps from 28th to 21st in the rankings while Maguire rises from 9th to 7th.
“I’m delighted to win”, he said. “To be perfectly honest, I feel a little bit embarrassed because I didn’t handle the pressure very well today, and I feel that Stephen played better than I did, and I feel that he deserved to win. I’m delighted to win, but disappointed with my performance and that I didn’t handle things better tonight. I was really pleased with the first session, because I felt like I played solid snooker, I felt really good and I scored well. It feels weird because I had four centuries in that match, and yet I don’t feel like I handled it at all.”
En route to the final, Ebdon beat the only Chinese player to qualify for the tournament, Ding Junhui, in the semi-final by 6 frames to 3. Ding can be well pleased with his effort of making the final four, which comes on the back of his recent Welsh Open win.
Ding qualified for the China Open by way of his world ranking, but as we reported in the current issue of WGM, nine other Chinese players were entered in the qualifying matches in Sheffield, England. Despite five of them making it to the final round, none managed to qualify. This left Ding to fly the flag for China, which he did in style.
The China Open has now firmly established itself on the world snooker tour, and there’s no doubt we’ll be seeing more talented snooker players emerge from China in the near future.
