One of my personal favourite tournaments, filled with classic matches, moments and a sheer dominant performance by the eventual winner; the 2016 Masters showcased an event to remember.
The 42nd Masters involved Shaun Murphy as defending champion losing out in the first round to Mark Allen. One of Murphy’s lost frames was via a forfeit where he failed to hit reds for 3 shots in a row.
The quarter-finals saw 2 heavyweight contests. Firstly, Trump and Robertson clashed in an epic which consisted of 6 century breaks between the players in a best-of-11 matchup. Trump did come out on top with a century in the final frame decider although he did lose in the semis against a formidable Barry Hawkins.
The second QF showdown involved O’Sullivan and Selby. Although O’Sullivan scraped by Williams in the first round, every match following that was just dominance. This was displayed in his match against Selby and the winning frame was one of the best frames of snooker you could ever see.
When someone mentions a frame of snooker being ‘one of the best’, it generally involves a hefty amount of safety play leading to an eventual resolution. This frame wasn’t exactly that formula but it was, in my opinion, the best counter clearance you could ever hope to see. In short, Selby made a comfortable 70 break but then failed to develop any more reds. After a few rounds of safety play, this led to O’Sullivan clearing the rest of the table with 73 (from a fairly unfavourable position) to take the match and progress to the semi-finals. Honestly, who wins a frame when they are 70 points down?
(There will probably be a future Instant Classic Short looking at this frame alone because it was just that good)
O’Sullivan’s semi-final match against Bingham was another top notch contest which displayed some of the best single shots of the whole tournament. In order to try and keep this short, I’d suggest watching Tequila’s ‘Absolute Essence of Ronnie O’Sullivan – Masters 2016’ video on YouTube.
That leads us to the finals. Hawkins vs O’Sullivan. Unfortunately for Hawkins, he wasn’t able to reproduce the form he brought out against Trump – but in all honesty, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference that day. After losing the first frame, O’Sullivan had ascended to a state beyond the realm of human, where he was simply untouchable. Not much else to say besides: he won 10 in a row.
The Masters 2016 remains as a personal favourite of mine. It had top-tier matches, countless memorable moments, a couple of my favourite frames of all time and a performance from a champion that can be compared to Tiger’s 2000 US Open win. That is the only golfing reference I know; don’t ruin me. The entire tournament was an Instant Classic for me.
Fun fact: Ronnie O’Sullivan took 8 months off playing Snooker before coming back to compete in the Masters that year! It was his first televised event that season! His performance won him £200,000 as well as equalling Hendry’s 6 Masters titles!