{"id":287710,"date":"2026-02-08T19:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T19:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287710\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T19:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T19:12:07","slug":"world-grand-prix-zhao-xintong-beats-zhang-anda-in-all-chinese-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287710\/","title":{"rendered":"World Grand Prix: Zhao Xintong beats Zhang Anda in all-Chinese final"},"content":{"rendered":"

He had struggled in ranking events this season, failing to go past the second round in nine of the previous 11, but has found success in non-ranking events, winning the Riyadh Season Championship in November<\/a> and making the last four of the Shanghai Masters and Champion of Champions.<\/p>\n

“I don’t feel that I’ve completely lifted the pressure of playing as world champion yet,” said Zhao, who continued his 100% record in ranking finals, making it four wins out of four.<\/p>\n

“Mentally I still feel there is room to learn from the very top players. This season so far, although I’ve had some good results, I feel that my overall consistency hasn’t been as strong as the very best.”<\/p>\n

He made successive breaks of 130 and 145 in the sixth and seventh frames, but 34-year-old Zhang, chasing a second ranking title in his fourth final, knocked in four breaks of more than 50 as the first session was shared 4-4.<\/p>\n

Zhao raised his level further in the evening session, scoring heavily to take three of the next four frames, opening a 7-5 lead with a break of 111.<\/p>\n

World number 23 Zhang was on for a maximum 147 break in the 13th frame after potting 10 reds and nine blacks, but he broke down on 73.<\/p>\n

Zhao restored his two-frame advantage with a 134 break and hit 65 to move within one of victory before sealing the win and \u00a3180,000 winner’s prize with a 131 clearance.<\/p>\n

It proved a fitting finish to what has been a landmark tournament for Chinese snooker, producing the first all-Chinese semi-final line-up at a ranking event, while nine of the players in the last 16 in Hong Kong hailed from the host nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He had struggled in ranking events this season, failing to go past the second round in nine of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-287710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}