Higgins closes in on title

May 4 2009

John Higgins stretched his lead to eight frames as he closed in on victory over Shaun Murphy in the Betfred.com World Championship final.

The pair resumed their battle on Monday afternoon at 11-5 in Higgins' favour, and the Scot won three of the four frames before the mid-session interval to go 14-6 in front.

With 18 frames needed for victory, and four more to be played on Monday afternoon, there was the possibility of 33-year-old Higgins achieving the rare feat of winning with a session to spare.

He had turned on the style on Sunday night to win seven out of eight frames, firing in two breaks of 128 and also a run of 95.

And although Higgins was not at his very best when they returned to the Crucible on Monday, Murphy's misses helped him out.

Higgins took the opening frame of the session as Murphy twice failed with attempts to pot the yellow at key times. The 26-year-old from Irthlingborough rattled in a brisk break of 91 to take the next, but frame 19 was much tighter.

The pair became engaged in a safety battle on the blue, and when Higgins eventually potted it he snookered himself on the pink, putting the white directly behind the black.

He was too close up to the white to produce a swerve so went off the side cushion and across the table to feather in the pink, which had been perched over the pocket.

Murphy should have won frame four of the afternoon after Higgins broke down on a break of 49, but after reaching 43 he got poor positioning on a red and could not produce the necessary precise cut required to keep the break going.

He left the red for Higgins who clinched his eight-frame lead with a run of 27. No player has come back from 11-5 in the final to be world champion in Sheffield, so Murphy needed to make history, and the chances of his doing so were fading, largely because of his own mistakes.