Whoever wins the 2025 World Snooker Championship will be making history. We’ll have either the oldest world champion or the first Chinese world champion and both would be huge for the sport.
If day one of the best-of-35 final at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield is anything to go by, then come Tuesday morning, there will be one hell of a party on the streets of Xi'an –hometown of Zhao Xintong – while Ronnie O’Sullivan’s record of lifting the title as a 47-year-old back in 2022 will remain unbeaten.
That’s because Zhao put on a snooker clinic to lead Mark Williams 11-6 overnight, as he ruthlessly raced into a 7-1 lead during Sunday afternoon’s opening session before Williams fought back somewhat in the evening to win the session 5-4 but still trail by a healthy margin.
In the history of world finals, no one has ever overturned a deficit of five frames or more overnight to triumph at the end of day two but if anyone can, perhaps it’s the Welsh Potting Machine.
With Williams heading into his fifth world final at the age of 50, having won three of his previous four and having impressively downed world No 1 Judd Trump 17-14 in a captivating semi-final, there was a pre-match feeling that he might be too wily for an opponent who hadn’t been beyond the second round in two previous Crucible appearances.
Zhao’s talent has never been in question and neither, in truth, has his comfort on the big stage as he proved when winning the UK Championship back in 2021 for his first triple crown title, before adding the German Masters a few months later.
He is an amateur in name only – being reduced to that status as he returns from a 20-month ban for match-fixing. It bears repeating that he never threw a match himself but was party to others fixing matches and bet on snooker, hence the punishment.
If not for that ban, he would almost certainly still be in the top 10 of the world rankings. He also demolished the greatest snooker player of all time, O’Sullivan, 17-7 in the semi-finals, winning with a session to spare on Friday evening to earn himself a day off on Saturday while Williams did battle with Trump
However, even for the most composed of individuals, a World Championship final can be a nerve-wracking occasion that causes the butterflies to flutter and the cue arm to shake. There’s no shame in that and most players happily settle down after a few frames. It seemed to take Zhao just a few shots.
If he looked slightly uneasy giving awkward high-fives to members of the crowd when introduced by MC Rob Walker at the start of the final, he immediately appeared at home on the table.
Three of the first four frames were taken by the Chinese star, including a century break and he turned the screw even further after the mid-session interval.
He restored his three-frame lead with a break of 57 and although Williams looked to have found his mojo when he notched a run of 61 in frame six – more than double his previous best – he misjudged a cannon off the black, was unable to make a fine cut on the red and Zhao did the rest.
Emboldened by his lead, the Chinese star got even better as the session came to an end, piecing together a fluid 104 and producing a remarkable plant on a long red to finish with an 83 for a 7-1 lead.
Williams needed a quick start to restore some balance in the evening, which he did with big breaks in frames nine and 10 to close the gap to 7-3. He had recovered from that exact scoreline to beat Trump in the semi-finals but Zhao settled down to win the two frames before the mid-session interval and restore his six-frame advantage at 9-3.
The most important five frames of the final so far followed. With Williams having to win three of them as a bare minimum, and ideally four, he appeared on track by taking the first two.
But his cueball control consistently faltered and his potting could only bail him out of trouble for so long, while Zhao looked supreme when in the balls, floating round the table and hitting back in frames 15 and 16 to leave himself on the brink of breaking things open at 11-5 to the good.
A hugely important final frame of the evening saw both men have chances to win it but Williams ultimately pinched it on the colours to at least give himself a fighting chance at 11-6 behind on a day where he appeared to be fighting his game throughout. Yet it is Zhao who will sleep the better, knowing he is just seven frames away from glory on Monday when the players return at 1pm.
His victory would be a complicated one – just how celebrated should a player returning from a match-fixing ban be? But it would undoubtedly be seismic and confirm snooker’s prevalence in the huge Chinese market.
The oldest world finalist will have something to say about that, of course, as he chases history of his own. Zhao may have done half the job but the bigger half is still to come
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