In his first final, Fan Zhengyi won his first title. In the final of the European Masters, Fan defeated Ronnie O’Sullivan 10-9. In addition to the title and award, Fan won £80,000 in award money.
Prior to the tournament, Fan Zhengyi was ranked 80th, threatening to withdraw from the tour at the end of the season. Jumping into the 31st place, he finally freed himself from this anxiety. The 21-year-old also has an impressive trophy and a place in the Champions League in the fall. Like Jordan Brown at last year’s Welsh Open, Fan Zhengyi achieved that reversal with a nerve-wracking win in the tiebreaker against Ronnie O’Sullivan.
Slow start in the afternoon
In his first final, Fan Zhengyi initially found it difficult to build on his good performance from previous rounds. But Ronnie O’Sullivan also made several unusual mistakes. In the intermission they shared tires. Overall, Fan Zhengyi seemed more made up of the two. He was better able to punish his opponent’s mistakes and thus lead 4-2. In the next frame, O’Sullivan had his first chance. Once again he failed to earn the frame of a good chance. But this time, Fan failed to exploit this weakness. On the break from a good position, I missed an easy black dot from the spot. O’Sullivan got the frame.
In the final frame of the session, O’Sullivan got his first liquid fracture. Perhaps it was too liquid for him at the time. cut himself off To explain to the audience that it would be very annoying now if someone moved in his field of vision. Despite his struggle with non-existent movement issues, he was able to secure the frame. 4-4 Happy overall for Ronnie O’Sullivan. Fan Zhengyi missed good chances to make a higher progress.
Start tonight with horns
The evening began as the afternoon ended. Ronnie O’Sullivan was preoccupied with things that could distract him. However, he also got plenty of time to think about these things. After his separation, he initially spent a lot of time in his chair. With his first shot of the night, Fan Zhengyi pierced a very long red hue. He then developed the Reds and ultimately played the biggest break of his professional career with a total score of 135 points. After O’Sullivan failed to take his chance in the next frame, he hit Fan at a speed of 110. Until then, there was only one person responsible for the high balls in this final: Fan Zhengyi.
#147sf You see, Ronnie, that’s how the century goes!
– PN (peer_noack) February 27 2022
Fan Zhengyi was clearly the better player at this point, but Ronnie O’Sullivan decided not to give up and fought back. In the following frames, both players had chances. But in the end, O’Sullivan made a few more points of his speech. Once again he managed to equalize.
He stayed tight in the European Masters final
After the break, it looked like things could turn around. O’Sullivan was the first to appear in the frame, but Fan was in a broken state and about to steal the frame. When he wore yellow, he missed a slight black tint. O’Sullivan was unable to seize the opportunity to take the lead again for the first time after leading 1-0. An error in the site was followed by the loss of a bay. Fan Zhengyi clearly had a severe short-term memory loss, breaking through a strong brown followed by an even stronger blue. As if that hadn’t happened with the dead black girl a short while ago.
Fan Zhengyi has everything it takes to be a true champion! Strong nerves, unbelievably long pots, can take fatal mistakes like nothing, … This man will bring us so much joy! #147sf
– Swiredriver (@Swiredriver3) February 27 2022
Frame followed by some errors by players and some anomalies. As if there wasn’t enough running against O’Sullivan, he also made a clothing mistake. He eventually lost the tire after putting another lucky red instead of snooker to get the necessary foul points. Once again, fans had a two-frame progression.
Then Ronnie O’Sullivan played Century Out of Nowhere. Indeed a mandatory component of each of his matches, but in this final it was completely unexpected at the time. Since 2-2, they’ve always taken turns taking two shots well. Consequently, O’Sullivan also won the most competitive 16th tire to an 8-8 split. Now, O’Sullivan had to break the series code to win the final match.
Three chances for two tires for the first title
In the next two frames, Fan had a good chance after O’Sullivan opened the picture on the table early, but missed a heavy ball to continue the break. In frame 17, Fan 82 played from that chance. In the next frame, he missed his first good chance to secure the match and the title. Ronnie O’Sullivan fought back and played some of the best balls in the final to stay the decider.
So in the end it got really exciting again. The decision-maker began with a rather long safety battle at a high level. Even Fan Zhengyi made a small mistake and was unable to return the core ball to the kickstand. However, O’Sullivan has entered the purchase. He left behind the image of a promising novice to his opponent. An absolute test of Fan Zhengyi’s nerves of steel. He traversed it with flying colors. Horn narrowly missed him, but 92 secured him the frame, match, and title! What an impressive achievement.
Ronnie O’Sullivan was full of praise for his opponent, the Victoria Snooker Academy and Chinese snooker in general. The best player won, he just tried to keep up and give him a match. Fan said his win over Keren Wilson gave him confidence. In the final he did not put any pressure on himself because he was not the favorite. He just tried to focus on each frame. Winning the final against Ronnie O’Sullivan is a dream come true:
fan cross Tweet embed:‚ Playing against Rooney in the final really made my dream come true because Rooney is the idol of every Chinese player.
‚Rooney is always very generous to the Chinese players and helps them all the time. He is very happy to play Ronnie and learn from him.
– Phil Haigh (@philhaigh_) February 27 2022
Europe’s masters are not a good place for big stars
The banners at the European Masters Championship indicated the surprise from the start. In the first main round, defending champion Mark Selby was eliminated by Jordan Brown. And, as with nearly all seeded tournaments this season, Judd Trump insisted on returning home one time later in solidarity. Crane Wilson (against Van Zingy), John Higgins, Barry Hawkins, and Neil Robertson were also eliminated in the same round. The latter didn’t lose any of his recent excellent level, but he did meet an equally great player Pang Junxu. Pang had already made a name for himself as a favorite fear in his first debut season. In the next round, David Gilbert failed.
Zhengyi played a major role in eliminating the common favourites. On his way to the final, he eliminated not only Keren Wilson, but also former world champions Graeme Dutt, David Gilbert and Yan Bingtao. On paper, Ronnie O’Sullivan had the easiest route to the final. But he also played the week like nothing and no one could stop him from walking.
