Gary Wilson produced an impressive performance to beat seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan 5-2 in the Xi’an Grand Prix quarter-finals. <\/b><\/p>\n
Wilson took command from the start with breaks of 74, 101 and 79 putting him 3-0 up, but fouls in the fourth frame gave O’Sullivan a way back into the match and he also won the fifth frame to cut the lead to 3-2.<\/p>\n
However, 40-year-old Englishman Wilson turned the tide with a 120 break in the sixth frame and although the seventh went down to the wire, he managed to book his place in the semi-finals. <\/p>\n
“You’ve got to show him [O’Sullivan] you are ready to play,” Wilson told the World Snooker Tour. <\/p>\n
“Against Ronnie, you can tell he’s trying to look at signs, trying to tell if you feel good or you feel bad, whether you are taking your chances or you aren’t, if you are bottling it.<\/p>\n
“All of that goes through your head. He feeds off that – you need to try and block it out of your head.<\/p>\n
“I am one of the weakest on the tour for technique, but if I’m comfortable in it and doing what I want to do then the confidence comes from there – I feel like I can play any shot on the table and beat anyone in the world.”<\/p>\n
“It has been kind of like that this week – I’ve felt reasonably in control.”<\/p>\n
O’Sullivan, playing in his first tournament since mid-August, had dropped just three frames on his way to the last eight but the 49-year-old could not find that form again on Saturday. <\/p>\n
World number 17 Wilson will face former world champion Shaun Murphy for a spot in the final after he knocked out home favourite Ding Junhui 5-3. <\/p>\n
Murphy, 43, constructed runs of 77, 66, 121 and 94 and is now two wins away from a 14th ranking title.<\/p>\n
That would move him one title behind Ding, who is ninth in the all-time ranking victories list headed by O’Sullivan with 41.<\/p>\n
The other semi-final will be an all-Welsh affair between Mark Williams and Daniel Wells following their victories over Lyu Haotian and Liam Pullen respectively. <\/p>\n
Three-time world champion Williams was pushed all the way in his 5-4 victory, while Wells defeated 20-year-old Pullen 5-2 to move another step closer to his first ever professional final. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gary Wilson produced an impressive performance to beat seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan 5-2 in the Xi’an Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-491434","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115356515985036091","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}