Fu Jiajun holds the "Stephen Hendry" trophy
Hong Kong player Fu Jiajun won eight consecutive sets in the final after falling behind 1-4 to beat John Higgins 9-4 to win the "Coral" Scottish Open in Glasgow. Higgins made a perfect start with a three-shot break, but the home-playing Wizard won only one set in the ensuing match; Fu won his third ranking title of his career with a brilliant performance, a prize of £70,000 and a Scottish Open title trophy named after him from "Billiards Emperor" Stephen Hendry.
The victory this week is the most wonderful performance of Fu Jiajun's career, in the total of 36 sets won, the 38-year-old Fu Jiajun played a total of 11 shots to break the hundred, and 21 strokes of 50+ consecutive attacks, the terror firepower is incredible.
At the beginning of the season, Fu Jiajun did not perform well, and until the British Championship two weeks ago, he failed to reach the round of 16 in any ranking match. At the beginning of the month, Fu Jiajun reached the semi-finals with a strong performance at the British Championship, and immediately began another climax of his career.
Fu Jiajun and Higgins before the game
In 2007, Fu won his first ranking title (Grand Prix) in Aberdeen, Scotland, and in 2013 he won his second ranking title in Australia. This is the seventh time fu Jiajun has reached the final of the ranking competition, and he finally defeated Higgins to lock in a meaningful crown, and with this victory, he raised his world ranking from 14th to 8th.
World number three Higgins missed out on his 29th ranking title, thus failing to overtake O'Sullivan and Davis Sr., who are still behind Hendry's 36 in the all-time leaderboard, in tied for second place.
In the first stage of the final, Higgins started with a single shot of 126, 101 and 100 points – the first time a player had broken the 100 with three strokes in the final. Before halftime, Fu Jiajun scored 106 points in a single shot and also scored a color, 1-3. Higgins then scored a single 78 in the fifth inning, but surprisingly this was his final performance in the game, and Fu Jiajun won eight consecutive games with 58, 54, 89, 59, 59 and 60 points to freeze the final score at 9-4.
4-9, an unpredictable final score
"Can't believe it, still can't believe it..." Fu Jiajun said in a post-match interview, "After John [Higgins] made that kind of start, I think... Well, maybe 9-1 or 9-2, it's possible. I felt like in a very short time in the game, I pulled John's level down to as low as I was, and the game started to get trivial, very trivial, with a lot of safety ball exchanges. ”
"Then John made two mistakes, and I was taken care of by good luck. From 4-1 to 4-4, these sets were very important, and I felt like I escaped the first stage, and I was very satisfied with the first stage [ending the first stage 4-4]. I played very well in the evening, good snooker game. It's still hard to believe I won the championship a week later. ”
Received the trophy from the "Emperor"
Fu Jiajun attributed the big score win to good luck: "I felt the pressure while watching the semi-finals, saw the reversal that John staged against Judd [Trump], so I knew it was possible and I had to end this game as soon as possible. I had some mistakes at the end, and to be honest Tonight John was very unlucky, as if every good stroke of luck had been taken advantage of by me, a large part of it. ”
Commenting on his first victory in a ranking tournament in more than three years, he added, "This win is special. I was in really poor shape for the first half of the season, and I felt terrible when I started playing at the Championships a few weeks ago, but somehow I found some feel. I feel like I've won 15 of my last 16 games and can't believe that everything is starting to get better. This win was probably the best of my career. ”
Final score