International Championship

Ding Jinhui wins his first major tournament for 5 years!! Chris Wakelin was scoring the better in the early part of the game, taking a 4-1 lead. Ding improved his scoring and won 5 frames in a row to go 6-4 up. The match see-sawed between the players until Ding went 9-7 up. In frame 17 Ding tried a long distance plant that didn't look on and he had to make. It looked like it was going wide, but in front of a loud, pro-Ding crowd, the red wriggled in the pocket and dropped in. Wakelin couldn't believe it! Ding made a decisive 64 break and left Wakelin needing 4 snookers. You could hear the groans from the crowd as Wakelin got up to try and get his snookers. When Ding got out of a snooker and left Wakelin snookered behind the pink, the concession came and Ding was a 10-7 winner!

Ding doesn't play Judd Trump in the Champion of Champions until Wednesday. Plenty of time for him to get a good rest and make the trip to Bolton.

The Weakling seemed to be suffering from a broken razor.

Well done Ding on finally being bothered enough to win something. I look forward to the next 6 months of "now Ding's turned the corner, that World title is in the bag!"

I'm a Ding fan so I'm chuffed for him.
As for talk of a World title well that seems an awfully long way off. If he can find the game that got him to a final and semi final against Selby at The Crucible a few years back with power to add then maybe. But that is a big ask.