Former winner Shaun Murphy produced a superb performance to thrash China’s Xiao Guodong 13-3 and become the first player into the 2026 World Championship quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
Murphy, a winner at the Crucible in 2005 and runner-up in 2009, 2015 and 2021, led 6-2 overnight against China’s world number nine Xiao Guodong, before winning seven of the eight frames in Friday’s first session.<\/p>\n
It meant the 43-year-old eighth seed won his match with a session to spare.<\/p>\n
As a result, Friday’s evening play will feature just the second instalment of the match between Barry Hawkins and Mark Williams, with the divider raised so the whole arena can watch.<\/p>\n
Murphy made breaks of 93, 66, 103, 69, 115 and 103 in Friday’s session to set up a last-eight tie against the winner of the all-Chinese match between reigning world champion Zhao Xintong and Ding Junhui, with the quarter-final beginning on Tuesday and finishing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“I’m really pleased with how I played. I’m delighted,” said Murphy. “It does not happen often that you win with a session to spare, because everyone is so good.<\/p>\n
“I would not say I’m desperate to win another World Championship, but it is close.<\/p>\n
“It’s 21 years ago since that clueless 22-year-old came here and nicked the trophy from everyone. Since then I’ve been trying my hardest to get the trophy again. It’s not been through the lack of trying.”<\/p>\n
Murphy last reached the quarter-final stage in 2021, before he lost to Mark Selby in the final, and said he still feels he can improve.<\/p>\n
“I’m loving the game, loving practice and still think I can get better,” said Murphy. The best days are still ahead of me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former winner Shaun Murphy produced a superb performance to thrash China’s Xiao Guodong 13-3 and become the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-415326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415326","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=415326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}