Five years ago, Yan Bingtao, who was only 17 years old and 283 days old at the time, made it all the way to the final of the Northern Ireland Open, losing 8-9 to Mark Williams with a 6-3 lead, just one last set away from breaking O'Sullivan's record of the youngest qualifying champion (17 years and 358 days) held by O'Sullivan for 24 years. The first "big test" of his career ended in defeat;
Five years later, Yan Bingtao once again ushered in another major test of his career, the quarter-finals of the World Championships, and once again met the old Ma Wei who was old enough to be his father. At this time, although he is still young, he already has a ranking champion and a Masters champion, and after eliminating the world championship four-time champion Selby 13-10 in the last round, he not only has the capital to challenge the triple crown king's golden left hand, but also has the confidence to impact the world championship four.
The best record of Chinese players at the World Championships is that Ding Junhui reached the final in 2016 and was ranked second, but only two of them achieved five times in the final four, namely Fu Jiajun (2006, 2016) and Ding Junhui (2011, 2016, 2017). Perhaps in the dark, the world championship final four is a threshold for China's top players in Crucible, and there is still some luxury to talk about winning the championship, but reaching the semi-final is the touchstone to test Yan Bingtao's strength.
1/4 final, 13 wins in 25 innings, played in three stages. In the first eight innings, as the only seedling of the Chinese legion, Xiao Yan undoubtedly made people sweat, although playing a single shot of 102 and 85 points, but Williams was 2-2, successively played 60, 106, 72 and 77 points, and played 4 consecutive innings to establish a relatively solid advantage of 6-2. However, Xiao Yan, nicknamed "Tiger", was calm and calm in the second stage, slowly consuming the opponent's lead.
In the ninth inning, he won 84-1 on several occasions, and in the 10th to 13th innings, he scored a high score of 80, 72 and 103 to trail 6-7. After two sets of the war of attrition, he relied on patience and defense to "grind" the victory 62-21 and 67-20. After the second stage, he counter-played a 6-2 to make the set 8-8. It is worth mentioning that in the eight innings of this stage, he did not let Kim's left hand shoot a high score of 50 or more.
Such a score means that the two sides will stand on the same starting line in the third stage, and the 13-win game in 25 innings will be condensed into a 9-in-5 system, and Williams' experience bonus at the World Championships will be minimized. Although Yan Bingtao has never beaten his opponent in the ranking match, the only two victories came from the 6 Red Ball World Championships and the Champions League, his strength has been verified, his mentality has been tested, and whether he can create a miracle and become the third Chinese person to reach the final four of the World Championships is worth waiting to see. The third phase of the competition between the two sides will be held at 9:30 p.m. Beijing time on April 27.
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#Yan Bingtao ##2022斯诺克世锦赛 #