World number two Luke Humphries secured his place in the World Grand Prix final with a 5-3 victory over James Wade.<\/p>\n
Humphries averaged 96.92 and threw 10 180s as he reached the final for the fourth successive time.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old Englishman will face Welshman Gerwyn Price on Sunday evening in Leicester after he beat Nathan Aspinall in the other semi-final.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got to do it again because there’s so many major finals I’ve let slip. Gezzy [Price] is playing well but if I play like that again, it’s going to be a cracking game and I hope it is,” Humphries told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“To make four Grand Prix finals on the trot is super special. It’s history for myself and I’m proud of that but unless I pick that trophy up, unfortunately that history doesn’t mean anything.”<\/p>\n
Humphries, who won this title in 2023 but has lost in the past two finals, took the opening set of the semi-final but Wade produced a brilliant 141 checkout en route to drawing level.<\/p>\n
The pair exchanged the next two sets before Humphries took control of the contest to move 4-2 ahead.<\/p>\n
Wade refused to go quietly and pulled one back to keep the match alive but Humphries held his nerve in the eighth set to seal victory on double top.<\/p>\n
In the other semi-final, Price beat a spirited Aspinall 5-2.<\/p>\n
The Welshman took a three-set lead as Aspinall struggled to reproduce the form that had seen him average 105.15 in his quarter-final win over Ryan Joyce.<\/p>\n
Aspinall briefly rallied and produced a superb 132 checkout – the highest of the match – to get a set on the board.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old then threatened to turn the match around when he reduced the deficit to one set at 3-2.<\/p>\n
However, Price regained his composure and closed out the next two sets without reply to secure his place in the final.<\/p>\n
Price said he was “frustrated” by Aspinall’s antics during the match as he interacted with a partisan crowd at the Mattioli Arena.<\/p>\n
“I’m glad to come through the game. Nathan was complaining about the crowd, but they were on his side,” Price said.<\/p>\n
“He’s performing a little bit on stage. I’m great friends with Nathan, but take it on the chin sometimes when you’re losing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number two Luke Humphries secured his place in the World Grand Prix final with a 5-3 victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-791414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791414","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=791414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}