Shaun Murphy has opened up on the relief he feels having secured automatic qualification for the 2025 World Snooker Championship.
The Magician has been a constant member of the world’s top 16 for a couple of decades, but his status among the elite had been under jeopardy in recent months.
With the ranking points he earned for his glories at the 2023 Players Championship and Tour Championship coming off his rolling two-year tally, Murphy was under pressure to perform.
At several points during this term, he was ranked outside the top 16 on the provisional Race to the Crucible standings.
Yet Murphy has stepped up with some important match victories over the last few months to safeguard his spot at the venue stages in Sheffield again this year.
The 42 year-old obviously captured a major trophy at the Masters in January, but as an invitational event, his prize money there didn’t count towards his ranking position.
Still, a sequence of three successive quarter-finals appearances or better since the World Open have ensured his return to the Crucible next month.
“It’s a massive relief I have to say,” Shaun Murphy told co-host Phil Seymour on the latest episode of the OneFourSeven Snooker Podcast.
“It was a genuine concern, I was aware of this at the start of the season. I knew the problems that I was walking into.”
“It certainly became a frustration in January when I won the Masters, because the Masters doesn’t count.
“It’s great, and I look at my trophy and I’m very pleased with it – there’s a big reward with it, and it’s a massive event – but it doesn’t count.
“It was kind of a bit of, yeah that’s great but you’re still in this hole. You’ve still got all those points from two years ago coming off.
“That’s the nature of our system. It’s all well and good winning the Players and Tour Champs two years ago. I think I was in four finals out of five.
“Apart from the [2023] World Championship loss to Si Jiahui in the first round, I went through a real rich vein of form.
“But if you’re not defending those and playing to that level consistently – like last season was possibly the worst of my career – you can play yourself into trouble.
“It’s been a problem that I’ve been aware of all season. I’ve been looking at, amongst others, snooker.org.
“And just a quick shout out to them, the stuff they produce as a resource is incredible. If you went on my search history, which is a risky place to go, snooker.org would be close to the top of it.
“But listen, had the worst happened and I fell out of the 16 for the Crucible and had to go to the qualifiers, I would have prepared for it.
“I would have given it my best. With respect to everyone else, I would have fancied winning my qualifying matches.
“And I think I would have been a handful in the draw. I’m not sure that would have been a great thing for anybody.
“You really, really take your chances when you go there…I’m delighted to be honest. A few results went my way.
“But I think it was pretty much guaranteed before the Players Championship, to be totally honest. I think there was a couple of results that went my way.
“The win against Barry at the Players pretty much secured it. So it’s great to go to the Tour Champs again – an event I missed last year – and have a bit of a free crack.
“Just get involved, get stuck in amongst it. It’s a massive event in its own right, I’m not going to use it as a warm-up for the Crucible.
“I’m going to try and treat it with the respect I think it deserves. It’s a huge event. Nothing breeds confidence like winning.
“Nothing would fill me with more confidence and belief going to the Crucible than with a win in Manchester.”
Shaun Murphy beat Kyren Wilson to lift the Paul Hunter Trophy at the Alexandra Palace in London at the start of the year.
But that proved to be a rare defeat for Wilson in a big final this season, with the world champion adding a fourth ranking title of the ongoing campaign to his collection courtesy of a 10-9 victory over Judd Trump in Sunday’s Players Championship final.
Murphy gave high praise to the Kettering cueist, whose form is even more impressive considering all the commitments he must undergo as the sport’s reigning world champ.
“An incredible match, and an incredible run actually of Kyren. He really, really is doing so well as world champion,” Murphy said.
“You know, when somebody wins the World Championship, you’re never sure how they are going to go, are you?”
“You’re never sure how they are going to cope with that expectancy. I think back to my own year as world champion. It wasn’t a great year.
“I attended every function, every charitable thing, every golf day – I went to the opening of an envelope. if I was asked to go, I went.
“I thought that was really important. If I could have a go at it again, I would be so much more focused on actually trying to win snooker matches.
“I think Kyren Wilson, for a first-time world champion, deserves so much credit for having kept snooker and performances as a snooker player as his top priority.
“He has had an incredible season. Two tournaments left, and obviously I’m competing with him in both of them.
“But you wouldn’t be surprised if he won one of them again, would you? You wouldn’t be surprised, because he has become a serial winner.”
Shaun Murphy and Kyren Wilson are among a 12-strong field competing in next week’s Tour Championship, which runs from March 31st to April 6th in Manchester.
Featured photo credit: WST
Indeed, Shaun Murphy was provisionally outside the top-16 for some time.
But it’s not unprecedented. Mark Allen was lucky to stay in the top-16 in 2018 after he won the Masters. He needed some results to go his way in Beijing. Stuart Bingham did indeed drop out of the top-16 in 2021, after his win and semi-final in the Masters in 2020 and 2021. He qualified for the World Championship, where he beat Ding Junhui. Bingham and Ding has very similar records during those 2 years: a couple of Q-finals and one big win. But Ding’s win was in the UK Championship, so he was seeded 9.
The whole thing is just an inconsistent mess.
Murphy would have been this years Maguire (ironically) if he had fallen out of the top 16 at the cut off for the worlds: I agree he’d have almost certainly still got to the crucible through qualifiers, and he’d have been the name to avoid for all the seeds.
Yes, he would have been strong favourite to progress, but as Neil Robertson found out last year, there are a lot of very tough opponents in the qualifiers. Someone can gain a lot of momentum winning a couple of matches before the top-48 even come in.
For example, it looks like Stuart Bingham’s section will contain Michael Holt, Oliver Lines, Fan Zhengyi and Robbie Williams. Jack Lisowski looks likely to have to beat Zak Surety and Ricky Walden. The list goes on, and anyone could be up against Zhao Xintong.
Shaun Murphy would have been clear favourite against anyone, but also under enormous pressure, as his interview suggests.
Ali Carter, Stuart Bingham and Jack Lisowski would be the three most dangerous qualifiers if they prevail at the EIOS.
Ali Carter has a decent draw – looking like Scott Donaldson or He Guoqiang. Bingham and Lisowski have a bit more work to do. Maguire looks to have a good draw (Lei Peifan). Wu Yize could also be dangerous, assuming he doesn’t actually make it through the Players’ Championship, but currently he’s set to play Thepchaiya or Matthew Stevens. There’s also Zhao Xintong floating somewhere in the draw who is a complete unknown.
I almost included Zhao in but he’s been out of the TV environment, aside from one appearance in York, for a considerable period of time.