Wu Yize held off a Shaun Murphy fightback to ensure he will take a slender 13-12 lead into the concluding session of their World Championship final at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.<\/p>\n
Having watched Wu deliver a succession of big breaks to pull clear at 10-7 overnight, Murphy emphatically roared back into contention in the best-of-35-frames final on Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Englishman, who was crowned champion in 2005 and is aiming to set a new record for the longest gap between first and second titles, reeled off the first five frames on offer with breaks of 76, 52, 59 and 60.<\/p>\n
However, he was given a huge helping hand by his 22-year-old opponent, who initially appeared to be carrying the weight of the occasion on his shoulders.<\/p>\n
With his trademark long-potting ability conspicuous by its absence, Wu repeatedly left Murphy opportunities to capitalise.<\/p>\n
To his credit, Wu stopped the rot in the 23rd frame of the match – crafting an important break of 64 after Murphy left a red over the right corner.<\/p>\n
That shifted the momentum back in Wu’s favour, allowing him to limit the damage.<\/p>\n
Wu, who could become the second-youngest world champion at snooker’s most famous venue, levelled the match after a contribution of 46 and then regained the lead with runs of 60 and 61 in the final frame of the session.<\/p>\n
It means that there will only be one frame separating the finalists when they return at 19:00 BST – the first time that has happened since 2014, when Mark Selby eventually defeated Ronnie O’Sullivan 18-14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wu Yize held off a Shaun Murphy fightback to ensure he will take a slender 13-12 lead into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-565981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}