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Lilly-May Tingle
Sports Reporter & Snooker Correspondent
1:00 AM 22nd January 2025
sports

Murphy the Master Again

Snooker
Photo: OrnaW
Photo: OrnaW
The 50th edition of the Johnstone’s Paint Masters at Alexandra Palace was a highly intense and thrilling week of snooker. It ended with the magician Shaun Murphy pulling another trick from his cue to win the tournament. Murphy beat Kyren Wilson 10-7, winning the tournament for the first time in 10 years.

The week's drama started before the event, with last year's champion, Ronnie O’Sullivan, pulling out on medical grounds two days before the event's start date.

In an interview with Eurosport, The Rocket said:

I was that wound up on Thursday, I broke my cue.

As the Masters is an invitational event with only the top 16 players in the world competing, world number 17 Neil Robertson took O’Sullivan’s place. Within the top 16 this year, two newcomers to the event, Si Jiahui and Chris Wakelin, were knocked out in the first round. After the first round, every player left in the tournament had won the Masters before, apart from Kyren Wilson. This showcases the talent needed to play within the top 16 of the snooker tour.

With a small number of players in this event, we went straight to the quarter-finals. Shaun Murphy beat Neil Robertson 6-2, Mark Allen beat Mark Selby by the same scoreline, Judd Trump beat Ding Junhui 6-3, and Kyren Wilson beat Luca Bercel 6-4.

The next stage was the semi-finals, a highlight of which, was Shaun Murphy making a 147 against Allen, that the crowd absolutely loved.

The semi-finals saw some tightly contested frames, with Murphy beating Allen and Wilson beating Trump, taking them to the final. The afternoon session of the final saw Murphy have the upper hand, leading 6-2 in a 19-frame game. When the evening session came around, Wilson had a big mountain to climb to win, which he faced headfirst, winning five of the first seven frames of the session, taking the score to 8-7 in favour of Murphy.

Murphy regained control, and won the last two frames of the match, ending on a century break, to see him lift the Paul Hunter trophy.

After winning the match, Murphy said:

I may not have got any silverware, but I got a nice bit of crystal.

They all travel to Germany next for the German Masters in Berlin, but all players will start to have one eye on the final triple crown of the year, the World Championships, which commences in April.