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2008 Masters (snooker)

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Dates
  
13–20 January 2008

City
  
London

Organisation(s)
  
WPBSA

Venue
  
Wembley Arena

Country
  
England

Format
  
Non-ranking event

The 2008 SAGA Insurance Masters was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place between 13–20 January 2008 at the Wembley Arena in London, England.

Contents

Mark Selby won the tournament by defeating Stephen Lee 10–3 in the final. In the final frame, he tied Ken Doherty for the highest break of the tournament, recording a total clearance of 141.

Facts and figures

  • Ryan Day potted 15 reds and 14 blacks in his wild-card match against Barry Hawkins before attempting a long black in an attempt to achieve a 147, instead of potting a straightforward brown and getting an almost assured 144.
  • Peter Ebdon also was on for a 147, but missed the last-but-one red in his quarter-final match against Stephen Lee.
  • Ding Junhui won his match against John Higgins 6–4, needing a snooker in the last frame with the last 5 colours remaining.
  • Mark Williams scored his first century of the season (a 118) in winning the first two frames against Ken Doherty, before losing the next six.
  • Ken Doherty was 4–2 down to Shaun Murphy, but made three centuries in four frames in winning 6–5.
  • Seven matches went to a deciding frame (6–5).
  • Two first-round matches went to the last black: Stephen Lee's match against Graeme Dott, where he came from 5–2 down to win 5–6; and Marco Fu also won on the black in defeating Neil Robertson.
  • Mark Selby won three deciding-frame matches in reaching the final, coming from 5–3 to beat both Stephen Hendry and Stephen Maguire 6–5, and he also beat Ken Doherty by the same scoreline in his semi-final.
  • This the first time since 1994, that Ronnie O'Sullivan didn't reach the quarter-finals.
  • Michaela Tabb became the first woman to referee a Masters final. She had already refereed the Welsh Open final in 2007.

    • Field

    Defending champion Ronnie O'Sullivan was the number 1 seed with World Champion John Higgins seeded 2. Places were allocated to the top 16 players in the world rankings. Players seeded 15 and 16 played in the wild-card round against the winner of the qualifying event, Barry Hawkins (ranked 19), and wild-card selection Marco Fu (ranked 27). Mark Selby was making his debut in the Masters.

    Prize fund

    The breakdown of prize money for this year is shown below:

    Qualifying stage

  • Winner: £2,000
  • Runner Up: £680
  • Semi-final: £250
  • Quarter-final: £105
  • Total: £3,600

    • Wild-card round

    In the wild-card round, the qualifier and wild-card players played the 15th and 16th seeds:

    Qualifying

    The 2007 Masters Qualifying Event was held between 7 September and 12 September 2007 at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. The winner of this series of matches, who qualified for the tournament, was Barry Hawkins.

    References

    2008 Masters (snooker) Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA