Stephen Hendry is through to the final of the Citywest Irish Masters after a convincing 6-3 victory over world number one Mark Williams this afternoon. Hendry will now take on Ronnie O'Sullivan in tomorrow afternoon's final. O'Sullivan defeated Peter Ebdon 6-3 earlier tonight.
Hendry was in impressive form, needing only 50 minutes to open up a 3-1 mid-session interval lead, helped by winning the second frame with a break of 100. He extended his lead to 4-1 with another century - this time a break of 113. Williams began to fight back in the sixth frame, taking it 62-2. In the next frame, Hendry led by 41 to 22 with one red remaining but he missed to the centre pocket and Williams cleared up to reduce the deficit to a single frame.
However, Hendry quickly responded with a break of 86 in frame eight and he dominated again in the final frame, with two visits of 37 and 38 securing his place in tomorrow's final.
"I didn't play as well as I did against Alan (McManus)," said Hendry afterwards. "Yet in that match I didn't nick any century breaks but today I made two, so it just shows you rely on the break of the ball to make the big breaks. I did play well today, but there was a lot of scrappy frames from Mark and there were times where the shots he was playing were even putting me off my concentration because I was surprised to get back to the table so quickly. But we can all have off days and we can all play badly and luckily it was my day to play well," he said.
"You could see Mark was struggling with his game today but he is the world number one and the world champion and I got him on an off-day. He is going to play ten times better than that in the world championship where he'll be defending his title. He'll be back but obviously you've got to try and concentrate on your own game which is what I did and what I had to try hard to do with Mark missing so much. It was a good win and I'm in the final again so I'm happy," he added.
Filed by Amanda Fennelly
