Selby triumphs in Munich

11^th January 2013

Ramona Dragomir

Ramona Dragomir

11 January 2013

World number one, Mark Selby beat Graeme Dott 4-3 to win the European Players Tour Championship Event 6 (also known as Munich Open) and record another smashing victory in less than a month.

On December 9^th 2012 an overwhelmed Selby was lifting the UK Championship trophy after winning 10-6 over Shaun Murphy, thus putting an end to a constant struggle that kept him away from winning and performing at his best.

In front of a very excited German crowd, who are happy to see more snooker tournaments than ever before, Mark Selby and Graeme Dott began their cue-crossing with Selby taking the opening frame.

Dott, whose last major title was the 2007 China Open, didn’t lose any time in getting back at his table partner and with breaks of 35 and 27, drew level.

Selby took control of the match again, after getting a scrappy third frame in his bag, while his Scottish opponent hit a great 106 break to catch up with him and won the next frame as well, to get into a lead at 3-2.

What happened next was a typical Selby-comeback: “The Jester from Leicester” using runs of 72 and 90 to win 4-3.

Before reaching the final, Selby hammered Kyren Wilson 4-1, whitewashed his Mark King 4-0, put an end to Thailand’s Thanawat Tirapongpaiboon’s dream of reaching the semi-final with the same result and survived a very tough encounter with the Chinese player Tian Pengfei, ending in a 4-2 scoreline.

So reaching the final of the first edition of the German Masters back in 2011 (when he lost 9-7 to Mark Williams) and winning no less than two Paul Hunter tournaments (events that are also part of the EPTC series) which were staged in Fürth, Selby adds another title to his German collection to consolidate his first place position and get the best start a player could wish for at the beginning of a new year.