The fourth frame of the Welsh Open final took a frustrating turn for Stephen Maguire, who punched the table after leaving himself in a sticky situation.
Attempting to level the scores at 2-1 down, Maguire played a poor positional shot with Mark Selby leading the frame 30-24. After assessing his next shot on the red from every angle, the Glasgow-born cueist realised he would be forced to play for safety rather than go for the pocket.
And while pondering his next move, Maguire thumped the top of the table. Things would quickly get worse for the 43-year-old, whose wayward safety shot left a the door open for Selby to pot.
He duly obliged and went on to clear the table, taking the frame with a break of 78. Suddenly chasing a two-frame deficit in a best-of-17 contest, Maguire was left to lick his wounds at the mid-session interval.
Dissecting Maguire’s mishap, two-time ranking tournament winner Dominic Dale believes he paid the price for failing to control his reaction. “All of a sudden, he has realised he can’t take [the shot] on,” Dale told the BBC.
“The frustration just boils over because he knows he’s going to have to play a safety shot. What does he do about 20 seconds later? He plays what looks like an innocuous safety shot, makes a mess of it, leaves a cut-back on the red to the centre pocket and Mark Selby knocks it in before clearing the table for 3-1. You can’t afford to do that. You must always be in control of your emotions.”
Dale’s fellow BBC snooker pundit, Darren Morgan, agreed that pushing the ‘self-destruct button’ leaves a player in dangerous territory.
“[Maguire] wears his heart on his sleeve and he does get frustrated,” said the Welshman. “I can categorically tell you I have never punched a snooker table. In some ways, it’s a good thing to see. It shows how much it means to him. But once you’ve hit the self-destruct button, it’s hard to come back from.”
Despite the concerns, Maguire did manage to restore his composure and claw his way back into the final. The Scotsman halved the deficit with a break of 54 and levelled the contest in the sixth to deny Selby his breathing room.
