John Higgins won the Totesport.com Welsh Open yesterday, a win that further cements his place at the top of the World Snooker provisional rankings. The Scotsman, the reigning World Champion, now sits a colossal 9505 points in front of Ronnie O’Sullivan in second after having amassed 31000 points so far this season.

His win in Newport at the weekend was his first ranking title of the season but consistent form elsewhere has led to this huge lead at the top of the rankings.

Couple this with the fact that this season there are only a further two rankings events to go and it is pretty obvious that Higgins may well be in the number slot for two seasons, such is the gap at the top.

Ali Carter was the losing finalist in this years Welsh Open in a tournament that he seems to perform well in. Carter was of course the defending champion but Higgins proved far too tough an opponent than Joe Swail did last year.

Higgins led 6-2 after the first session in the best of 17 frame match. This meant that Carter needed to come out all guns blazing if he was to have a realistic chance of winning back-to-back titles.

He did manage to get back into the game when Higgins, leading 7-3, stumbled at 72 on a 147 chance. Carter jumped out of his seat and made a magnificent clearance to pull it to 7-4. Carter said, “John played out of his skin to go 5-0 up, and it was hard for me to produce my best when he was like that. I take my hat off to him. At 7-4 I was back in it, and I was a bit unlucky not to get to 7-5. I would still have had it all to do, but he would have been looking over his shoulder rather than at the winning line. I tried to put him under pressure.”

Carter, who himself has moved to number four in the rankings with this result, went on to say that he was gutted not to retain the title, but he see’s this as a building block towards the World Championships in April and prior to that the China Open.

Higgins managed to make two centuries and a further eight breaks over 50 to come out on top, eventually winning the match 9-4.

The next ranking event is the China Open at the end of March.

Photo credit: Worldsnooker.com

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