‘Granite’ Judd comes up trumps at Masters
IT LOOKS like the long-time frustrating talent Judd Trump is finally capable of living up to his promise after swatting away the greatest ever snooker player, Ronnie O’Sullivan, like a mildly annoying fly in the final of the Masters on Sunday.
It was the Bristol player’s second success in one of the Triple Crown events, which was a hell of a long time coming after his triumph in the 2011 UK Championship.
When Trump faced his arch-rival Kyren Wilson in the first round of this year’s Masters, the match was billed as the battle of the up-andcoming stars.
It’s difficult for Wilson, at 27, to get away with that tag, but to put 29-year-old Trump in that bracket is as much of a stretch as the spandex pants after the Christmas dinner.
When Ronnie O’Sullivan was that age he had already won a host of Triple Crown events, including two world titles.
That said, the Rocket went on to win the lion’s share of the major titles he has to date in his thirties and even into his forties, so there’s still plenty of time for Trump to go on to dominate the game in the way the supreme natural talent he showed when he first broke through suggested he might.
It could be argued that Trump was unlucky to arrive on the scene when the likes of O’Sullivan, John Higgins, Mark Williams and in more recent years, Mark Selby, have been dominant and now, as the first three reach their twilight years, it’s a chance to come out of their shadows.
Trump has tended to blow hot and cold throughout his career, looking incapable of missing a pot one day and being completely erratic the net, but he appears to be a completely different, more consistent, animal this season.
His win over Ronnie O’Sullivan in the final of the Northern Ireland Open in Belfast in November was impressive, and he repeated the trick with interest at the weekend as he hammered his rival 10-4 to land his first-ever Masters crown at the Alexandra Palace.
Trump has always been capable of beating any player that’s put in front of him, but his Achilles heel has been maintaining that level of performance day in and day out at an energy-sapping tournament.
However, to win the Masters you have to beat the best, not once or twice, but in every round as he showed with victories over Kyren Wilson, Mark Selby, Neil Robertson and finally O’Sullivan.
Trump seems to have a more meticulous approach to his game at present, he has reined in his urge to go for too many high tariff shots and, despite the odd hiccup, his temperament and ability to close out a match has gone up a notch or two.
So what has changed? There’s certainly a noticeable difference to the way he plays the game, a switch to ‘granite snooker’ as he dubbed it himself. The old, all-out attack ‘naughty snooker’ has been replaced by a more calculated approach where he waits for the opportunities and scores big when given the chance.
He may have only amassed two century breaks during his week at the Masters, but he made plenty of sizeable contributions to win frames in one visit.
The most pleasing aspect for the Bristolian, though, will be the quality of his safely play. To outgun the likes of Selby in that regard is no mean feat and shows a real, new-found maturity to his game.
At the start of the season Trump employed his brother, Jack, to travel with him on tour and work with him full-time, and having his sibling in his camp as he goes from tournament to tournament seems to be having a positive impact.
For every winner there has to be a loser, and although O’Sullivan may have been on the end of a hiding as he fell short in his bid for an eighth Masters crown, he’s still in the midst of an incredible season, having lost only three of his 32 matches played, and there’s plenty of life in the old dog yet.
It’s bubbling up nicely to an exciting World Championships in the Crucible Theatre in April/May, and Trump has certainly thrown his hat in the ring as a real live contender as he bids to complete the missing piece of his Triple Crown jigsaw.
It will be interesting to see if his new ‘granite’ game can take the shine of the diamond O’Sullivan again on the biggest stage of all.