New model Murphy ‘hits it like God’ to make world final

Shaun Murphy will aim to win his second World Championship title this weekend, 21 years after he first claimed the Crucible crown.

Murphy finished his marathon semi-final against John Higgins the strongest yesterday, recovering from 13-11 behind for a 17-15 victory and a place in his fifth final in Sheffield.

This isn’t a bolt from the blue by any means. Since winning his second Masters title in January 2025, 43-year-old Murphy has been one of the best players in the game and frankly, it has been a surprise that he has picked up only one more trophy – last year’s British Open.

Now he has a golden chance to reach the mountaintop in snooker again. Asked how different he was from the player who won here as a 22-year-old in 2005, Murphy said: “I’m a better player. I’m a totally different prospect, different package. I feel like my scoring is still there as much as ever. But I’m a more rounded, more mature player. I’ll say that I want to go out and play like it means nothing, but it will mean everything.”

Higgins paid a warm tribute to Murphy, saying: “Shaun was awesome. You can’t hit the ball better than that, the way Shaun hit the ball in that session. He just hits it like God.”

Murphy had one of those classic “get out of jail” moments we see time and time again in sport early in this tournament. He was level at 9-9 with China’s Fan Zhengyi in the first round and in the deciding frame, he was 36 points behind with four reds left and stuck in a snooker. He got out of the snooker, Fan narrowly missed a tough red to the middle and Murphy compiled a break of 50 he called “the best I have ever made”.

Murphy has mostly been imperious since, overpowering Xiao Guodong 13-3 in the second round and then knocking out defending champion and tournament favourite Zhao Xintong 13-10 in the last eight.

Now he has put another marquee win on the board. Higgins went into yesterday’s final session with the advantage, but the first two frames were sobering for those supporting the Scot, with Murphy striding coolly around the table as he made breaks of 132 and 127 to level at 13-13.

This was of course not the first rodeo for the 50-year-old Higgins and he took the next frame to edge in front again, before a run of 88 extended his lead to 15-13. Murphy came out firing after the interval, with breaks of 105 and 78 levelling the match at 15-15. Then came the inevitable nerves from both men. It was Murphy who made the fewest mistakes as he won two more frames for a precious victory.

When Murphy left the arena last night, Mark Allen and Wu Yize were battling to join him in the showpiece match, starting their final session level at 11-11.

After a slow burner of a first-round stage, we have seen some utterly absorbing snooker in the second week of the tournament. Seven-time winner Ronnie O’Sullivan showed in his two matches that he still has the quality to go all the way again in the years to come.

But O’Sullivan played only 10 main tour matches this year before this event. It doesn’t feel like enough. Fans will remember O’Sullivan winning the 2013 world title after taking off nearly the whole season, but being in your 30s is a whole different ball game from your 50s. O’Sullivan will give himself his best chance of glory in the next few editions of this event by simply showing up and playing more often.

Elsewhere, we have seen encouraging performances from some of the younger players during the tournament, predominantly Wu. But the last four was still made up of two players in their 40s and one in his 50s. The pendulum needs to swing more in the other direction.

We have long known to expect the unexpected at this event. The 100-minute frame between Allen and Wu on Friday may have irritated many fans in the arena, but it attracted the biggest audience of the tournament so far on the BBC, 1.4 million viewers.

While it’s true that the referee, Marcel Eckardt, could have moved to end the stalemate quicker, Steve Davis calling the episode “an embarrassment to snooker” and Stephen Hendry branding it the “dark side of snooker” was hyperbolic when you consider some of the serious recent issues in the sport, not least the match-fixing scandal involving 10 players, including last year’s world champion Zhao, who returned to the sport after a 20-month ban.

There was also talk about chalk here. Neil Robertson says he wants the old Triangle chalk – which is still favoured by O’Sullivan – to be banned because it leads to kicks and untidy marks left all over the table.

It would have been outrageous if Higgins had been denied victory by a kick he received during the deciding frame against O’Sullivan. But O’Sullivan, ever the contrarian, is unlikely to swap his chalk for the now favoured Taom any time soon. The chalk row will rumble on.

Photograph by George Wood/Getty