Wuxi Classic final.+ thoughts

The 2012 Wuxi Classic champion is Ricky Walden following a 10-4 victory over Stuart Bingham in todays final.

The pre final talk was of a closely fought tight match but although the first few frames were scrappy affairs it was Walden who took a 4-0 lead into the interval.That  became 5-0 in the next as Walden sensed his chance to establish an unassailable lead.Bingham to this stage had showed nothing in the match but managed somehow to pull it all together and produce a maximum 147 to win his first frame of the day..This joy would be short lived however as Walden won the next two to finish the session 7-1 ahead.

Walden was now only three frames from the title and on the resumption of play he extended his lead to 9-1.Bingham to his credit kept fighting and managed to win three in a row to close to 9-4 but the comeback was never really on,Walden knew he only needed to take his chance when it came and this he duly did in the next,sealing victory with a 74 break to add a second ranking title to the Shanghai Master title he lifted in 2008.

For Bingham it was a sad end to his remarkable week despite his 147 but he can look forward to his defense of the Australian Open in a few weeks with a lot of confidence from a great start to the season.

Walden also can look forward to the rest of the season now with a real chance of securing his place among the games elites.He will certainly hope he doesn't have to wait another 4 years to win his next ranking title.

So what can we take from this weeks action?

Well in truth it's hard to know.One thing we certainly saw is that there is no substitute for match practice as seeded player after seeded player fell to those who had come through the recent run of qualifiers.It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into the Australian Open for those of the top 16 who have decided to travel.

Another trend that continued this week was the growing instances of players in their late thirties or older making an impact.I'm not been ageist here in any way but it'd make you wonder where all these great young players we are always been told about are.I will be writing a more detailed bog on this later in week.

Finally based only on what I could see on the tv the attendances for this tournament seemed to be very poor. Again I don't know what reasons if any there would be for this but it would be a pity if the reason was the lack of Ding or indeed the other major box office players like Judd or Ronnie in the latter stages.

Anyway this is talk for another day,Today belongs to Ricky Walden and good luck to him.