Some mouth-watering ties here! What is a massive surprise nowadays here is that most of the big players are still in it, but I suppose that is what happens when a tournament is more than a best-of-7s!
Unlike last week, most of my predictions are correct (which is weird, since the previous one was such a balls-up), so here are the quarter-finals TOMORROW and some extra thoughts:
JOHN HIGGINS (1) VS. DING JUNHUI (9) (14:30 local time)
Higgins is the man on form, losing only 7 frames since his last 128 encounter, making 10 half-centuries and one century against Sydney Wilson. At the same time, he has rarely been troubled – his highest ranked opponent was Zhou Yuelong (48) and then his win was quite comfortable. Ding, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish as he came through two difficult deciders against Mitchell Mann and more recently, preventing a spirited fightback Ricky Walden to push him out of the top 16.
Ding has won the last four of their meetings, but the last time they met was when the Wizard of Wishaw was defeated 13-9 to Ding in the 2015 World Championships, and both players are performing much better now. To be honest, most of these matches can go either way, but my head is telling me to go for Ding on this one. Score? 6-5.
JUDD TRUMP (5) VS. SHAUN MURPHY (4) (14:30 local time)
Both attacking players and very evenly matched – this should be a great quarter-final. I didn’t expect Murphy to get this far, as I thought he would get beaten by Marco Fu, but Sam Baird beat him to that one. Judd has better form, better head-to-head record, so you would think this is fine by him? Murphy won their previous meeting coming back from 0-3 to win 4-3 of the semi-finals of the 2014 Ruhr Open, which he went to win.
Based on these facts, as well as Trump making more +50 breaks to Murphy (13-6) since the last 16, I reckon he will win 6-3. Also, Selasi won Great British Bake Off. I do not care if he wasn’t in the final!
STUART BINGHAM (3) VS. MICHAEL HOLT (27) (19:30 local time)
Holt became the first man since John Higgins in 2009 to beat Ronnie O’Sullivan 3 times in a year to get to his 3rd quarter-final this year. A Twitter blogger even went on to say that he is the new Mark Johnston-Allen (the man who has a winning 3-0 record against Stephen Hendry, write that in your pub quiz!) but oh well. Bingham blew my prediction away by beating Ali Carter 6-1 to face the Hitman, who says in an interview that his “general standard is pretty good,” joking that it was the new blue tick on Twitter that got him through it. Bingham will also be very confident, having got through his top opponents and is playing like the pressures of being World Champion at all are completely off his shoulders.
BUT which one? Another question is whether the idea of Holt getting into the Top 16 by reaching the final will creep into his mind. I doubt it – coach Terry Griffiths has done a lot of work on him. The odd thing is that twice before he has beaten O’Sullivan, and twice he got knocked out next round. I will go bold and go with Holt – I don’t think he will win this tournament, but he will very soon (there will be an article on that by the way!) 6-4
JOE PERRY (10) VS MARK SELBY (2) (19:30 local time)
Perry caused a surprise of the tournament by outplaying Neil Robertson 6-2 after finishing strongly against Aditya Mehta 6-3. Selby got through Burden and Astley before coming back from 5-4 down to win the decider against a very much improved Liang Wenbo.
Tome, Selby should win here – he is on better form and the decider against Liang Wenbo should give him a kick up the backside. This tie is probably the easiest to decide who will win, but these two are the top 10 players in the world – I’m prepared to be surprised! 6-2 Selby.
Final: Judd Trump beats Mark Selby 10-8.
