Ding Junhui 10, John Higgins 8

Ding Junhui last night won snooker's UK Championship, the second most important ranking tournament in the game. It was by no means a classic match, with much scrappy play and a profusion of errors, but nonetheless Ding can be very pleased with his performance and his title is certainly well deserved. It is only his fourth ranking event win, the last having been the Northern Ireland Trophy back in 2006, but as he is only 22 years old he has plenty of time to build on this collection!

Ding seemed a much more confident, well-rounded player around the table than he has been in recent years. He has previously tended to become demotivated very rapidly after making mistakes, to hang his head down and in some cases to seemingly give up completely. However, he appears to have matured immensely and now remains very level-headed, refusing to beat himself up over every slip and instead concentrating on enjoying his snooker. This change in attitude has made him a much more dangerous opponent, as John Higgins discovered last night.

The run of the balls was not especially conducive to big breaks, normally one of the mainstays of Ding’s game, and indeed it was Higgins who made the only century of the match, an excellent 115 in frame 17. However, Ding responded to this by ratcheting up his safety play to a new level, doing everything he could to make life even more difficult for the beleaguered Scotsman. With neither player willing to take chances on long pots many of the frames were drawn-out, tactical affairs, and although Ding always looked to be the stronger player the scoreline was pretty even right up until the very end.

In fact, it could be argued that the final scoreline was rather flattering to John Higgins, who was playing at the far below his best. He often looked uncomfortable round the table and made some terrible misses, completely unexpected from a player of his calibre. The bungled brown in frame 15, which allowed Ding to move within two frames of victory, is likely to haunt him till the end of his days. It is likely that exhaustion from his epic 9-8 victory over Ronnie O'Sullivan the day before contributed to Higgins' lack of form, and although he will obviously be disappointed at his loss he shouldn't worry himself unduly. He is still provisional world number one, and with a lead of 7705 points over his closest rival it is highly unlikely that anyone will catch up with him over the rest of the season.

Indeed, if anyone has something to worry about it is new UK Champion Ding Junhui. In addition to the £100,000 prize-money he has been awarded with his body weight in Pukka Pies. With 69 kg of pie lard stacked up in his fridge he's going to have to exercise like mad or he’ll turn up at the Masters in January looking like Stephen Lee...