The quarter-finals of the World Snooker Championship begin Tuesday morning and John Higgins will start his World Championship quarter-final with Neil Robertson as a warm favourite, setting up one of the tournament’s most charged ties.
Higgins arrives on the back of a gruelling comeback on Monday when he rallied from 9-4 down to beat Ronnie O'Sullivan, and his recent form at deciding moments is the clearest reason he is favoured: he has won 10 of his 12 deciding frames at the Crucible and, in 2024 alone, beat Mark Allen in a deciding frame at this championship. That late-frame steel has been on display repeatedly — in January he beat Zhao Xintong and Judd Trump in deciding frames at the Masters and went on to beat Kyren Wilson in the final — and he has a past Crucible quarter-final win over Robertson, a 13-10 victory in 2019.
But the head-to-head record complicates the picture. Neil Robertson leads Higgins 18-16 overall and carries his own history of dramatic reversals: he came from 5-1 behind to beat Higgins 6-5 at last year’s Masters and overturned deficits against Higgins in the 2022 Tour Championship final. Robertson also arrives with match sharpness — he beat Pang Junxu in round one and finished strongly to see off Chris Wakelin in the last round — and those late surges make him a dangerous opponent even when not the bookies’ favourite.
The context is plain: Higgins has fashioned a remarkable resurgence built on winning deciding frames at the Crucible, yet he will need to regroup quickly after a mentally draining match with O'Sullivan if he is to make a deep run. The preview notes that Robertson may be conserving his best form for a run-in at the Crucible, which would intensify the risk to Higgins if he begins the quarter-final short on energy.
There is also a counterpoint to Higgins’ recent narrative of resilience. He was blown away by Wu Yize in the final of the International Championship, a result that reminds observers Higgins is not invulnerable. That vulnerability matters because Robertson has proven he can overturn steep deficits against Higgins in major finals and tight matches, and because Higgins’ recent string of decider wins — including at the World Championship, the Masters and against Kyren Wilson — will be tested under fresh scrutiny on Tuesday morning.
The other quarter-final pairing to watch is Hossein Vafaei against Wu Yize, where the market quoted Vafaei at 7/4, a sign that bettors see this as a close call and that Wu’s capacity to trouble top players is being taken seriously after his International Championship final. What happens next is straightforward in sequence but consequential in effect: Higgins and Robertson meet Tuesday morning, and the match will reveal whether Higgins’ late-frame mastery can withstand Robertson’s comeback pedigree and recent form. The single, decisive question hanging over the tie is whether Higgins can convert the momentum of his Crucible deciders into a clean, composed performance against a rival who has repeatedly shown he can turn matches on their head.
