John Higgins has become the first Scottish man to ever win the Championship League snooker event beating Ryan Day in the final.
The 41 year old veteran snooker champion has had one of the best seasons so far. He won the Evergrande China Championship and the Champion of Champions in quick succession towards the end of 2016. Although he had a poor run at the UK’s and Masters, the Scot appeared to be back at his best this week at the Championship League.
In the semi final, John Higgins overcame Judd Trump 3-2 to book his place in the final. Trump trailed by 2-0 to bring it back to 2-2 but Higgins cleared the table in the decider to claim his spot in the final. Ryan Day beat Barry Hawkins to reach the final.
Higgins came out of the blocks strong – taking the first 2 frames of the final with only 1 frame required to be crowned champion. Although Ryan Day got chances in the third frame, a couple of errors from the Welshman allowed Higgins to mop up and claim the title for the first time.
Although the general snooker fans don’t follow the Championship League snooker much (mainly due to the lack of broadcasting), the event is good based on how the prize money is allocated. Players win money for the frames they’ve won. Judd Trump was tipped to win this week but he came up short once again.
The two boys will now have to fly out early tomorrow and head south of Spain to Gibraltar for the next stop in this hectic season. 12/1 for Higgins to win the title seems a generous offer given his current form. Ryan Day who is also enjoying good form of recent comes in at 66/1 which is also quite generous. Ronnie O’Sullivan and a couple other top players are not playing in Gibraltar this week but Neil Robertson, John Higgins, Mark Selby etc will be there.
