Judd Trump reached the final of the Betfred World Championship for the third time, scoring a 17-16 victory over Mark Williams who narrowly failed to pull of one of the Crucible’s greatest comebacks.
Having trailed 9-2 and 12-5, Williams recovered to lead 16-15 and was on the verge of becoming the first player to win from seven frames behind in a Sheffield semi-final. But Trump regrouped in time to take the last two frames and set up a final against Ronnie O’Sullivan, who beat John Higgins 17-11 in the other semi-final, on Sunday and Monday.
A tremendous match joins a list of dramatic recent semi-finals to go to a deciding frame, alongside O’Sullivan’s win over Mark Selby and Kyren Wilson’s defeat of Anthony McGill in 2020, and Higgins’ success against David Gilbert in 2019.
Trump now has the chance to win a second world title, having beaten Higgins in the 2019 final. Victory would make him the seventh player to lift the trophy more than once at the Crucible, joining Steve Davis, Stephen Hendry, Williams, Higgins, O’Sullivan and Selby. If the Bristol cueman takes the £500,000 top prize he will also finish the event as world number one.