Mark Selby and Martin Gould to meet in European Masters final

ByEurosport

Updated 27/09/2020 at 10:48 GMT

Martin Gould beat Judd Trump and Mark Selby defeated Shaun Murphy in the semi-finals of the European Masters in Milton Keynes. The current world number one was unable to fight back to catch Gould once he established a lead.

Martin Gould defeated Judd Trump in an upset at the semi-finals of the European Masters, as Mark Selby fought his way past Shaun Murphy.

Selby took the lead in the first frame with an impressive break of 84, and asserted a 4-1 lead with consistently heavy scoring.

He stumbled midway through the match as Murphy scrapped back into contention with wins of 65-45 and 71-50 to take the game to 5-3, but Selby held his nerve to win a sixth.

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Elsewhere Gould was 2-1 down to Trump in his semi-final but rallied to a lead of 4-2.

Trump showed his class with a determined break of 89 to bring the score to 4-3, but Gould dug deep to find something special.

For his fifth frame a break of 60 gave him a 104-1 frame win, before a century break of 102-7 saw him into Sunday's final.

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Judd Trump produced another impressive and heavy-scoring display to beat Kyren Wilson 5-2 to progress to the semi-final stage of the European Masters, where he will face Martin Gould.

Trump, 31, opened up a four-frame advantage in the best-of-nine encounter against Wilson, the player who brought his reign as world champion to an end at the quarter-final stage at the Crucible back in August.

The Bristolian put together runs of 55, 105, 76, 81 and 100 on his way to the semi-final, where he will meet Gould who came back from the brink to beat Yan Bingtao 5-4, but had to fend off a spirited fightback from this year's World Championship finalist Wilson, who managed to cut the arrears to 4-2.

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The world number six emerged from the mid-session interval reinvigorated, reeling off the next two frames – albeit courtesy of multiple visits – to half the arrears.

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However, Trump, a two-time European Masters winner, sealed the seventh frame and progression to the last four with a smart clearance of 100.

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Elsewhere, Shaun Murphy held his nerve in a final-frame shootout to beat defending champion Neil Robertson and set up a showdown with Mark Selby.

The 2005 world champion had led 4-2 but was pegged back by Robertson to send their match to a decider. A fluid match – that had seen runs of 91, 50 and 84 from Robertson, and 51, 69 and 94 from Murphy – was settled by a tactical final frame, with Murphy taking three visits to settle it.

It was a far more straight forward affair for Mark Selby, with the three-time world champion rattling off five frames on the bounce to beat Ding Junhui 5-1.

Runs of 60, 70, 70 and 58 were enough for Selby to make the last four.

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