Welsh Open final in ‘surreal’ incident after ‘bizarre’ stand-off | Other | Sport

Barry Hawkins and Jack Lisowski were stuck in a stand-off as they each refused to budge in the Welsh Open final, with the latter looking to stage a big comeback.

Going into the evening session, Hawkins led 7-1, in the best of 17 frames. However, Lisowski took the first two frames of the session to start a comeback.

With the score at 7-3, the 11th frame was a cagey one full of safety play. At one point, with the points at 18-22 in Lisowski’s favour, the white ball was on the bottom cushion close to a red.

With it being nearly eight minutes since a ball had been potted, and the risk too big to play any other shot, the two players exchanged little taps of the white ball into the red. It appeared to be a stalemate that may have required a re-rack.

“Very bizarre, surreal almost,” TNT Sport commentator Dave Hendon said of the situation as it unfolded. Fellow commentator Neal Foulds then added: “We’ll wake up and it was all a dream, none of this ever happened.”

After Lisowski was praised for the first shot, and Hawkins did the same, BBC commentator Ken Doherty said: “Yeah, another excellent shot there,” prompting some laughter within the crowd.

John Parrott then added: “This is a horrible situation.” Doherty replied: “What time is breakfast John?” Before Parrott cheekily responded with: “I don’t know, but they’re missing the last bus.”

After a few exchanges and some stern looks from the referee, Hawkins decided to play a shot up the table. That, however, left Lisowski with a long, straight red into the corner pocket, which he took to break the stalemate.

He eventually went on to take the frame to bring the score to 7-4 and increase the pressure on his opponent. Hawkins, however, moved to within one frame of victory by taking advantage of a fluke to take the 12th frame.

Lisowski took the 13th frame to make it 8-5. But Hawkins wasn’t to be pulled back, the 14th frame going his way as he took the final 9-5.