The 2025 British Open final will be contested between Shaun Murphy and Anthony McGill at the Centaur in Cheltenham on Sunday.
McGill reached a ranking event final for the first time in eight years courtesy of a 6-3 victory over John Higgins in an all-Scots affair.
The 34 year-old trailed his esteemed opponent 3-2 but subsequently reeled off breaks of 50, 57, 104, and 93 to extend his superb run in the tournament.
McGill, twice a ranking event winner and a former World Championship semi-finalist, was once ranked as high as number 12 in the world but began this week hovering just inside the top 60.
The Glaswegian’s poor form over the course of the last few years had seen him tumble down the order and tour survival was potentially even in jeopardy this term.
With £45,000 already banked for reaching this point, McGill is guaranteed to move back up to number 45 on the rolling two-year list.
Indeed, he’d be knocking on the door of a return to the top 32 if he could go all the way to glory in what is the 2025/26 snooker season’s fifth ranking event.
Standing in McGill’s way of an unexpected success is Murphy, who will undoubtedly begin the 2025 British Open final as the favourite.
The Magician has produced some excellent snooker in the last few days, underlined by his victories over the likes of Neil Robertson and Judd Trump in the earlier rounds.
On Saturday, Murphy added reigning champion Mark Selby to that impressive list, thumping his fellow Englishman 6-1.
While not as drastic as McGill, the 42 year-old has experienced his own mini ranking woes of late having briefly dropped out of the elite top 16 of the world rankings for the first time in 19 years recently.
Murphy is the reigning Masters champion but has generally struggled to reproduce his best form on a consistent basis over the course of the last couple of seasons.
The 12-time ranking event winner has, however, quelled any tentative fears that his career might be in a decline.
Murphy and McGill have clashed on 12 occasions in the past in all competitions, with the former boasting an 8-4 superior head-to-head advantage.
They haven’t crossed paths since the 2023 Welsh Open, a match Murphy won to take his winning streak over McGill to three in a row.
Two of the latter’s four wins have come in the single-frame Snooker Shoot Out, but he does have valuable experience of beating the former world champion over a longer distance.
The pair twice faced off in World Championship bouts at the Crucible Theatre with McGill edging Murphy 10-8 in the first round in 2016, which transpired a year after Murphy had first beaten McGill in the 2015 quarter-finals 13-8.
McGill, whose other victory over Murphy came at the 2016 Indian Open en route to securing his maiden ranking crown, will be hoping to get off to a fast start.
If Murphy can get a decent lead early on, it’s difficult to see an outcome where he doesn’t come out of it as the champion.
But if the match remains close, in whose hands the Clive Everton Trophy eventually ends up becomes increasingly less certain.
It’s worth remembering too that the last three ranking event finals during this campaign have all required deciding frames to determine the winner.
The 2025 British Open final is the best of 19 frames and will be played across two sessions starting at 1pm and 7pm UTC+1 (BST).
2025 British Open Draw
Round of 32 (bo7)
Iulian Boiko 0-4 Ali Carter
Zhang Anda 3-4 Xiao Guodong
Zak Surety 0-4 Louis Heathcote
Ben Mertens 4-0 Robbie McGuigan
Antoni Kowalski 2-4 Mitchell Mann
John Higgins 4-2 Zhao Xintong
Judd Trump 4-2 Martin O’Donnell
Barry Hawkins 4-3 Jak Jones
Stan Moody 4-2 Ian Burns
Cheung Ka Wai 1-4 Lei Peifan
Joe O’Connor 3-4 Mark Selby
Noppon Saengkham 3-4 Chang Bingyu
Anthony McGill 4-1 Oliver Lines
Mark Williams 4-3 Mark Allen
Liam Davies 4-2 David Lilley
Shaun Murphy 4-1 Neil Robertson
Last 16 (bo7)
Chang Bingyu 0-4 Mark Selby
Lei Peifan 1-4 Mark Williams
John Higgins 4-1 Ben Mertens
Mitchell Mann 4-2 Barry Hawkins
Shaun Murphy 4-3 Judd Trump
Stan Moody 4-3 Ali Carter
Xiao Guodong 2-4 Anthony McGill
Liam Davies 2-4 Louis Heathcote
Quarter-Finals (bo9)
Mark Williams 3-5 Mark Selby
Louis Heathcote 2-5 John Higgins
Stan Moody 3-5 Anthony McGill
Shaun Murphy 5-1 Mitchell Mann
Semi-Finals (bo11)
Anthony McGill 6-3 John Higgins
Mark Selby 1-6 Shaun Murphy
Final (bo19)
Anthony McGill vs Shaun Murphy
Click here for the update results and draw (snooker.org)
Featured photo credit: WST
