On April 16, Beijing time, the Snooker World Championship began, and Zhao Xintong and Jamie Clark played against each other. In the first stage, Zhao Xintong played a dominant performance, beating world champion Jamie Clark 7-2. After winning 7 innings, Zhao Xintong blasted 6 strokes of 50+, including 2 strokes to break the hundred, and the performance was close to perfection!
In his career, Zhao Xintong had only participated in the main tournament of the World Championships in 2019, but Zhao Xintong stopped in the first round and lost to Selby. This time, Zhao Xintong's second world championship main game trip in his career showed an extremely hot feel. Jamie Clarke, who has no previous World Championship regular race experience, is his first career appearance in Crucible, a world championship rookie.
In the first set, Zhao Xintong opened up in full force, playing a single shot of 98 points, 104-30, the first to win! In the second set, Zhao Xintong hit another single shot 57 points, 79-16, and won another set.
In the third set, Zhao Xintong scored 73 points, 74-35, winning the first three sets in a row. In the fourth set, Jamie Clark pulled back a city 76-11 with a multi-shot chance.
In the fifth set, Zhao Xintong blasted out the first shot of his career world championship to break 100, and scored 109 points in a single shot. In the sixth set, Zhao Xintong scored 78 points, 83-11, continuing to expand the advantage. In the seventh set, Zhao Xintong hit another shot to break 1001 points! In the eighth inning, Jamie Clark scored 67 points to win the second set of the game 75-6.
In the ninth inning, Zhao Xintong had bad luck and the mother ball fell into the bag, but Jamie Clark did not have a good chance to attack. In the defensive competition, Jamie Clark left an opportunity, Zhao Xintong scored the bottom bag red ball to complete the hand, and then hit the powder ball into the middle bag, the pink ball returned to the position, which is very beneficial for Zhao Xintong to deal with the chaos, of course, the black ball and the blue ball are still not in the point. Zhao Xintong scored 14 points and the attack was interrupted. After that, Zhao Xintong started again, although many red balls were in the position of sticking to the library, but Zhao Xintong still expanded his advantage to 42-10. In the end, Zhao Xintong won the round, and the first stage led by a large score of 7-2.
This season, Zhao Xintong ushered in a major breakthrough in his career, won one of the three major competitions of the British Championship championship, won the first championship of his career, and finally cashed in his talent! After that, Zhao Xintong won the German Masters championship and the second title of the ranking competition. In the single-season rankings, Zhao Xintong once ranked first, and is currently ranked second, second only to Neil Robertson, who is at the peak of his form. In the world rankings, Zhao Xintong has also become the only chinese snooker in the world's top ten, ranking 7th in the world (provisionally ranked 6th), setting a new career high. It can be said that Zhao Xintong's future is unlimited.