Neil Robertson took the fight right up to four-time champion John Higgins before falling just short in their world snooker championship quarter-final in Sheffield.
The two former champs couldn't be separated after the second of their three sessions on Wednesday (local time), with the pair sharing the eight frames to leave the Australian 9-7 ahead in the race to 13 heading into the deciding session.
However, the Scotsman fought back strongly to eke out a 13-10 victory and seal a place in his 12th career semi-final at the event.
Robertson may have felt frustrated that he wasn't able to take a more convincing lead into the concluding session after Higgins, who'd made a spectacular comeback to beat fellow great Ronnie O'Sullivan in the previous round, again battled back with an 80 break to take the last frame.
The 44-year-old Robertson, champion back in 2010, was hoping to reach his first semi-final for 12 years.
Higgins was behind for much of the match, but came into his own in the later stages, as the Australian's bid to reach his second final crumbled.
The 50-year-old Scot won three frames in a row to move to the brink of victory, then fashioned a pressure-filled break of 52 that eventually proved enough to get him over the line.
"It's a great achievement to get back to that one table. I'm just proud that I'm still in there fighting," Higgins told the BBC after this victory.
In the semi-finals, Higgins will play Shaun Murphy after the Englishman beat defending champion Zhao Xintong, of China, 13-10 in their quarter-final.
In the first quarter-final completed on Wednesday, Mark Allen seized on an "unforgivable" blunder by his opponent Barry Hawkins before going on to win 13-11.
Allen looked set to be dragged into a deciding frame, but his English rival failed to lay a simple snooker, plunging himself into problems instead, and it gifted the Northern Ireland player the chance to clear up and seal the triumph.
Victory set up a semi-final against another Chinese player, 22-year-old Wu Yize, who beat Iran's Hossain Vafaei 13-8 in their quarter-final.
- with PA
