Judd Trump has won his second ranking title of the season for the first time by beating Marco Fu in a very topsy-turvy final by coming back from 2-5 down to battle back to win the Players Championship 10-8, triumphant in an event of 16 of the best players this season.
This will be a huge sigh of relief for Trump, as his confidence would have been shattered had he lost this final, especially after two consecutive final losses in the Welsh Open and the Gibraltar Open. Despite this, he was the best player in the Players Championship, beating a potential banana skin of Mark King 5-2, dominating Ronnie O’Sullivan 5-3 (and now has a superior head-to-head record against him), and defeating a resilient Ali Carter 6-4 to reach the final. He took all of his experience with him in the final, as at his lowest ebb at 2-5 down, he made two consecutive centuries (including the event’s highest break of 136) before to interval at 4-5 behind. In the evening session, he made breaks of 110, 63 and 76 to thump four frames in the row to lead 8-5. Fu battled to close the gap to 9-8 with two 50+ breaks but ultimately, Trump took the crown by dominating the 18th frame with a break of 53.
Neither player played their best today – there were a number of twitches aplenty and Fu was still recovering from his semi-final decider against Ding Junhui the evening before. It was a very good tournament for Fu too. Beating Ding as well as convincingly pushing aside Mark Selby in the quarter-finals is a great feat. With him already knocked out of the China Open in the opening round by Daniel Wells earlier in the season, he now has just over a month to prepare for the World Champions at the Crucible on 15th April.
Trump finally gets the praise he deserves in trophies, but now brings up the inevitable question – can he be World Champion this year? Stephen Hendry remarked in an interview after the match that the floodgates could open for him, and could see him either defending his China Open crown or winning the World Championship. Trump is the man on form. Even though he is my favourite player, the huge amount of praise he is currently receiving will only be justified if he can win another Triple Crown event, especially the World Championship. It is his 7th ranking title, he does move up to 2nd in the rankings but he is being over-hyped to my liking. Even Stephen Hendry said Trump not winning a WC in his career would just be a travesty as Jimmy White never winning one.
What Trump needs to do is to not come from behind to win the final so often. This happened last night, against Stuart Bingham in the Welsh Open final (he was 4-0 behind at one point), against O’Sullivan in the European Masters (8-6 down) as well as against him in the 2014 UK Championship (9-4 down), the 2014 Champion of Champions (6-3 down), the 2015 World Grand Prix (4-1 down) and lastly 6-3 down against Kyren Wilson in the 2015 Shanghai Masters against Kyren Wilson. Out of those finals alone, he has only won two out of the six mentioned in this paragraph!
Anyways! On the 27th March, the China Open restarts in Beijing, where Trump will defend his crown by facing Jason Weston in the first round. This tournament is important for many, especially those who need points to either put themselves in better stead of the World Championship qualifiers or those near the Top16 = to avoid it altogether to automatically qualify for the Crucible. I have a post about that ready in a few days, so stay tuned!
