Mark Selby has won the UK Championship title for a third time after beating Judd Trump 10-8 in a fantastic final at the Barbican in York.
The 42-year-old has been in tremendous form in recent weeks, winning the Champion of Champions last month and powered his way into the final this weekend.
There he took on the world number one, who has not been in such great form, but has been winning plenty of matches nonetheless, such is Trump’s immense talent and underrated match play.
Selby largely bossed the final, taking a big early lead and never being behind, but he had to survive an impressive fightback from the defending champion.
Having led 5-0 and 7-2, things got much stickier for Selby when he found himself just 9-8 up, having spurned a great chance to win 10-7.
To the Jester’s credit he composed himself and made a fantastic break of 69 in the last when the table was very tricky. Doing enough to get his hands on the trophy and the £250,000 top prize.
The world number one has to settle for the £100,000 on offer for the runner-up and he will now end 2025 without a title to his name, the first time that has happened in a calendar year since 2013.
A sporting runner-up said: ‘He was brilliant at the start, I just dragged him down a bit towards the end. I was in a similar position last year. It’s hard to get over the line in these finals. I think Mark was the best player all week, he played very, very well and thoroughly deserved his win.’
It looked like it could be an incredibly short final when Selby raced into a commanding early lead, winning the first five frames.
The Jester was in sparkling form early on, making breaks of 77, 51, 97, 70 and 105 to win five on the spin and leave Trump reeling.
It wasn’t like he was completely blowing the world number one away, but produced some great clearances to pinch frames from behind.
Selby finally showed a bit of weakness, missing a couple, and Trump pounced with breaks of 74 and 75 to get his first two frames on the board. However, the older man took the final one of the afternoon to finish the first session 6-2 ahead.
That left a huge job for Trump in the evening and he made a great fist of it, despite losing the first frame to slip 7-2 behind.
Trump then won five of the next six, with breaks of 62, 105, 125 and 55 to narrow the scoreline to just 8-7 behind and things looked quite edgy.
However, Selby is a very tough man to rattle and even after this barrage he made a 77 to go just one frame from victory.
Even the toughest can feel the rattle, though, and Selby twitched as the finish line neared in the 17th frame, missing a simple red when presented with a great chance to win the tournament. Trump stepped in to complete the break which should have been Selby’s and go back within one frame.
It was thoroughly impressive that Selby wasn’t badly damaged by that blow and he came to the table with the balls in really difficult places, somehow making 69 to get over the line.
More to follow…
