John Higgins will battle it out with Ben Woollaston for the £60,000 top prize and the title of 2015 Welsh Open champion,after both came through thrilling semi finals today in Cardiff.
These days semi finals for Higgins are not the regular occurance they once were,but the way he started today ,you never would have guessed it as two flawless runs of 101 & 137 saw him fly into a 2-0 lead.
Brecel though has shown this week that he is not daunted by falling behind and he made most of his chances to level things up at 2-2 going to the interval..
That good form continued into the next as he took the lead for the first time at 3-2,before Higgins leveled it up again at 3-3. That became 4-4 as the next two were shared to set up a potential grandstand finish.
From here though Higgins took control again ,taking the lead at 5-4 thanks to a 135 break and doing what he had to do in the next to seal the 6-4 win and end to young Belgians title dreams
What a week it has been for Brecel though.It was 20 years ago that a young John Higgins lost out to Steve Davis in this event,but boy did he learn from the experience. I'm sure the same applies to Luca here and no doubt we will be seeing plenty more of him at the business end in the coming seasons
For Higgins,I'm sure there were times in recent months that he must have wondered if he was ever going to be playing in a final again,but he was always too good a player to simply fade away and he will be relishing the chance to claim a fourth Welsh crown.
Standing in his way will be Ben Woollaston,who broke Welsh hearts tonight,edging out home favourite Mark Williams 6-5,to reach his first ranking event final.
It was Woollaston who made the better start here and he deservedly held a 3-1 lead going to the mid session interval.Willaims was clearly struggling to find the sparkling form he produced in his quarter final win over Marco Fu,but he has always been adept ar winning ugly when it was required and he clawed his way back into this,leveling it up at 3-3.
Into the next and an unlucky in off from Williams gave Woollaston a chance which he took to lead again 4-3 and he moved within one of victory taking the next to go 5-3.
Back came Williams though,closing to 5-4 and forcing the decider by winning a tight tenth which hinged on a battle on the colours to make it 5-5.
Into the decider then and it was Woollaston who prevailed,clinching victory with two scoring visits to seal a famous 6-5 win.
So tomorrow we will have one man who started this week wondering if he would ever reach another final against someone who must have wondered if he would ever reach his first.With this in mind Higgins will start a warm favourite,but Woollaston has come through some real battles this week and certainly wont roll over. It should be fascinating.
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