With the last red on the table, Jimmy Robertson had given away 41 foul points while trying to escape a snooker. He briefly thought he had one foot in the final, but Yuan Sijun worked his way out of trouble and won the deciding frame 94-83. Metro reported that the 6-5 victory sent Yuan to his first ranking-event final.
Before Shenzhen, Yuan Sijun's best prize money from a ranking event was £21,000, according to SnookerHQ.
A run that changed the season
The world number 40 had struggled to turn good practice sessions into results earlier in the season. He said his game in practice remained strong, but he could not carry that form into tournaments. At Shenzhen, he won his opening match and benefited from a draw in which several seeds were beaten.
Robertson said the open draw gave him confidence rather than adding pressure. He knows there are no easy matches, but facing the sport's leading players can make a deep run harder to build. The semi-final was his first ranking-event appearance at that stage in four years.
Robertson earned £34,500 for reaching the semi-final. Metro reported that the ranking money should ease the threat of him losing his place on the professional tour.
Relief alongside the disappointment
Robertson called the Shenzhen loss "one of the worst feelings" of his career. After he got home, though, he began to take heart from the way he played through the middle and late stages of the match. He said he had not felt unable to get over the line; the chance simply went against him.
There was more at stake than reaching the final. Robertson said he hoped the run would keep him on tour for another year, a worry that had started to creep into his thinking earlier in the season. The semi-final gave him fresh purpose for the rest of the year, even though the final remained out of reach.
Snooker is one part of cue sports. Our three-cushion title report covered a different discipline; Robertson's Shenzhen run was a ranking-event snooker story.
A missed photo with a sporting great
Before he reached Shenzhen, Robertson crossed paths with Novak Djokovic while travelling through Beijing. Djokovic was ahead of him in the passport-control queue, then boarded the shuttle to the terminal. Robertson caught up with him but lost his nerve twice and did not ask for a photo. He later noted that Djokovic went on to win the China Open in Beijing.
Robertson's other sporting near-miss came much earlier. As a child, he had a trial with Crystal Palace and played for school and county teams. Snooker took over when tournaments clashed with football matches, and he turned professional at 16. He still loves football, but says he avoids physical play in case he gets injured.
Yuan later lost the final 10-5 to Wu Yize on 4 October 2026, BBC Sport reported. It was the first ranking event held in Shenzhen. Yuan earned £76,000 for reaching the final and climbed from 33rd to 26th in the world rankings, earning the biggest prize of his career at that point. He called his first ranking final "a little late" and said that, at the start of the event, winning the title could have taken him close to the world's top 16.
Robertson left Shenzhen with his first ranking-event semi-final in four years and £34,500 in prize money. He said he hoped the result would be enough to keep him on tour for another year.
