11.9.10

THE FINAL FOUR

The winner of today's first Shanghai Masters semi-final will be called Jamie.

If that's wrong we may as well all pack up and go home. Then again, it's been that sort of tournament...

Cope will start favourite after three good performances and wins over Steve Davis, Ding Junhui and Graeme Dott.

It's four seasons since the Stoke shotgun appeared in two ranking finals and he hasn't kicked on since. Indeed, this is his first ranking tournament semi-final since the 2007 China Open.

But Cope, who celebrates his 25th birthday tomorrow, is still a considerable talent and as long as he can keep a lid on his frustration he has a great chance to lift his first ranking title.

Burnett has toiled as a journeyman for 18 years before reaching his first semi-final. Mark Davis rather fell apart from 4-1 up to him yesterday but I don't expect Cope to and therefore Burnett needs to make a good start.

Mark Selby played very well to beat Mark King 5-1 yesterday. Ali Carter produced a grest escape against Matthew Stevens but, again, I wouldn't expect Selby to collapse from 4-1 up.

Carter has been solid if unspectacular all week. He will need to improve to beat Selby and reach the final.

15 comments:

shaun said...

A big well done to jamie burnett its been a while coming.good luck in the final

Anonymous said...

burnett versus selby or carter?
what a yawnfest. snooker over for me til next week.

Anonymous said...

Just been on the World snooker website to see their reaction on the Higgins saga, and lo and behold, in their Ws announcements section, they still have SIR RODNEY WALKER as chairman, talking about the IMG offer of 15 new tournaments.
Has Hearn forgotten about snooker or are they going to keep that embarassment of a site?

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave,

The best game this week at the Shanghai Masters - Carter/Selby (or it seems that way) - and Eurosport are eschewing it for replayed tennis from yesterday.

Granted if the 2 channels had live stuff i'd accept it, but they haven't until later.

People, don't want to watch it through their websites, and for all the good it does snooker, this is where Eurosport REALLY let themselves down.

Obviously not a priority sport in HQ for them to show a semi - when they show a wildcard nothing match - earlier in the week.

Disspointed!

Thanks, Joe

Dave H said...

If you have HD it's on there

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave,

Not everyone has the technology, Dave.

If Eurosport had 1 channel I could truly understand, but 2 channels - in which they've had both tables showing all week - just goes to prove that they really need a ratings boost when the weekend sports come on, so drop the snooker!

This is the reason BBC/ITV/Sky Sports are so important to the game.

Good result for Carter, but would love Burnett to win!

Thanks, Joe

Anonymous said...

ITV and Sky don't show any proper snooker

I like Eurosport's shambolic style, it's rather endearing

CHRISK5 said...

Wow ! - With Ronnie's withdrawal &
Robertson having a sluggish start to the season - Ali Carter is in great position to claim the World Number 2 spot,at the next revision
(which is the case no matter what
ranking list you use for reference)

With John Higgins not due back
until November/December - Ali C
could even do the unthinkable
& potentially become number 1 !

And no...I never thought I would say that !

Anonymous said...

@4.41

I have my crystal snooker ball. It tells me both channels are featuring the sport in the future...

Thanks, Joe

kildare cueman said...

Carter was spectacularly good after that amazing clearance in the fourth frame.

Its as well as I've ever seen him play and as well as anybody has played this week.

I was fortunate enough to get hd in last week, simply because my remote was broke and it was 40 euro for another.(yes it's a rip off country), but todays match justified my decision.

It'll be an interesting final. I think Burnett will perform but I can't see him getting over the finishing line unless Carter struggles desperately.

Nevertheless Burnett can relax (getting through the wildcard round would have been his big stress test),and anything thereafter would have been a bonus as will be the case in the final. I believe a good start is imperative.

Carter will have expectation working against him, but he coped well against Swail in his last ranking final, and theres no indication that he will falter tomorrow.

Hopefully we'll see a good battle, and even if we don't, its only a week to the World Open.

Anonymous said...

If Carter wins tomorrow, he's guaranteed to be second in the rankings.

If he wins tomorrow and matches Robertson in one of the next two tournaments, and goes a round further in the other, he will become the official no.1 for the next batch of tournaments.(except maybe in chrisk5's world wher he's probably 14)

Tom Gurden said...

Yeah what the hell was that about,cannot believe
It wasn't on this afternoon! And yesterday was even worse,
They showed carter v Stevens live until it was 4-4 then
They decided to show us recorded clips of rally crashes with music playing! That was disgracefull!

Greg P said...

Maybe Cope partied too hard the night before?

How else do you beat Ding, Dott and the renewed Davis and then lose to Burnett? I didn't see the match but basically he just didn't show up, right? That has to be the biggest shock result in a long time, I thought I was wasting time even checking the result this morning because I was sure it was a formality for Cope, even with his record of misfiring.

This is the weirdest week ever, a lot of that has been down to the conditions and Ronnie pulling out, I can't wait for the World Open, I'm sure it will be a lot better.

Anonymous said...

Sky Sports have four channels but they still haven't shown a proper snooker tournament for six years!

Anonymous said...

Eurosport may have a somewhat bad habit of cutting off live transmissions for whatever reasons BUT the absolute WORST thing is the Eurosport Player.

I've subscribed for years and whenever the live transmission ends the Player apparently gets swamped. All I know is it says 'buffering' over and over and over and over. And over. That doesn't happen until they end the live transmission.
Why offer to sell a service when it fails miserably at the time you need it most? For me is is only useful to watch snooker at work (when I'm on break!) or anywhere there isn't Eurosport. That is simply not good enough. It is more like cheating people with false advertising. Wake up Eurosport.