Judd Trump reached a 77th career ranking event semi-final on Friday with a resounding 5-0 victory over Mark Selby at the Shenzhen Open.
The showdown between the two Englishmen had been rightly billed as a heavyweight clash between two of the season’s most in-form players.
But the Shanghai Masters champion easily got the better of the China Open winner, with Trump whitewashing his opponent through breaks of 79, 77, 63, 52, and 51.
Although the 37 year-old recently surrendered his world number one position amid acquiring just one ranking title in almost two years, Trump remains an ever-present at the business end of tournaments.
Indeed, this is the fourth event in a row where he has reached at least the last eight – a stage where he believes his motivation to lift the trophy shifts into an extra gear.
“For me, when you’re in the quarter-finals onwards in a tournament, I think that’s when you really feel alive,” Trump told the World Snooker Tour.
“I think anything before that and you’re just trying to warm up and get to somewhere near your best.”
“I think from the quarter-finals onwards you can kind of see the winning line, and that’s normally when I raise my game.
“But yeah, the semi-finals are always that little bit more special. It’s normally down to one table at that point.
“All the attention is on you, and you can kind of see the finish line.”
Trump will face world champion Wu Yize on Saturday in what promises to be a grandstand affair between two of the best players in the game at present.
A big crowd will likely be in for that one, and helped by China’s Golden Week of holidays, attendances have generally been strong right throughout the week’s play.
“I think sometimes when the players play in the afternoon, you’re a little bit disappointed,” Trump said on his schedule with Selby.
“It’s normally a bit quieter. But with the holidays at the moment, I think the attendance has been superb for it being the first year.”
“When I walked out today I was pleasantly surprised how many people were out there.
“It can sometimes be a little bit hard to get up for it when it’s in the middle of the tournament, so it was nice to have that support out there and go out and play well in front of them.”
Wu will make his first appearance in the semi-finals of a ranking event since capturing the world title at the Crucible Theatre in May, meanwhile.
It was a familiar result for the 22 year-old on Friday, with Wu once again pipping Shaun Murphy in a deciding frame just as he did in the Sheffield final.
Trump and Wu most recently faced each other at the same round of the Shanghai Masters, with the former triumphing en route to securing the prestigious invitational title.
The first semi-final on the penultimate day will be between a pair of unlikely challengers in Yuan Sijun and Jimmy Robertson.
Yuan, bidding to claim a maiden ranking crown, ended the impressive run from veteran Michael Holt, while Robertson ousted Chris Wakelin.
Robertson and Yuan have encountered each other three times in the past, with the Englishman leading their head-to-head record 2-1.
2026 Shenzhen Open
Semi-Finals (bo11)
Saturday, Oct 3 – 07:00am BST
Yuan Sijun vs Jimmy Robertson
Saturday, Oct 3 – 12:30pm BST
Judd Trump vs Wu Yize
Featured photo credit: WST
A third ranking semi-final for Yuan Sijun, who has steadily professed the last three seasons. This is evident in his ranking rise and increased century counts.
Yuan Sijun is in the finals by winning on the pink in the decider. It took 5 hours and 45 minutes for a best of 11. That is a long time to be sitting down, wow! I watched something I haven’t seen before and in the decider no less. It took Yuan Sijun 7! snooker escape attempts to escape a nasty snooker by Jimmy Robertson. It cost him a comfortable lead but still came back to win.
>It took Yuan Sijun 7! snooker escape attempts to escape a nasty snooker
Yes, what a stretch of play that was! — amazingly, Robertson went from being significantly behind to having a healthy lead, just via that snooker — but he wasn’t able to win the frame from there — then with enough points still on the table for Yuan Sijun to win, Robertson was snookered himself on the final red — at that point it was clear he was in trouble, because even if he managed to escape the snooker and hit the red, he would have been lucky to not to leave the red on.
For a pro in the SF of a ranking event, it was a relatively routine one cushion escape — but Robertson missed badly, not once but twice — I mean not even close — then he hit the red with his 3rd attempt, and left it on.
Honestly, a pro who cannot manage a relatively routine one cushion escape in less than 3 attempts does not really deserve to win.
Yeah and I forgot to mention Yuan Sijun went up 3 nil in the first three frame with his highest break being a measly 22, while Jimmy Robertson had a 53 break in the third frame and still blew. The table was fast and the pockets were tight which gave them a hard time. eah I know you cheer for the long shots; you will hit it right soon enough.
>does not really deserve to win
An attempt to justify why I said that:
Robertson seeing he was snookered on the final red was a HUGE psychological moment in the match — you saw by his body language that he knew this, also that he was annoyed at himself for failing to win the decider when he had a decent chance to do that just a few moments earlier (after laying a nasty snooker himself).
It was the kind of moment when a player’s mental strength is really tested.
Recalling that moment, to me Robertson had one obvious best hope: in escaping the snooker, he had to hit the final red hard, meaning with speed and pretty much full-on, and hope both it and the cue ball landed in a way that the red was safe — given the position of the red, a controlled, lower speed escape with only a glancing hit on the red was very likely to leave the red on.
I realize that to hit the object ball full-on or nearly full-on from behind a snooker takes skill — you have to get the angle right — but like I said, this looked like a fairly routine one cushion escape, so getting the angle right should not have been that much of a challenge for a pro like Robertson (per WST, #40 in the live rankings).
Robertson should’ve taken some time to calm down and think carefully about the table and the best shot to play.
But it looked like he didn’t really do that — instead he tried 2 normal, controlled escapes, missing both rather badly — after those misses, the psychological pressure he was feeling probably increased significantly — when he hit the red on his 3rd attempt, it was similar: the cue ball wasn’t traveling very fast, and it was only a glancing blow on the red, leaving an easy pot — the match was pretty much lost right then.