Higgins, who pocketed £20,000 as a beaten quarter-finalist, said: “Neil deserved to win and I think he will take some stopping”.
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Grace said he was “gutted” not to take the match all the way, but the 30-year-old part-time snooker club table cleaner, whose playing earnings in the past two seasons amounted to £13,000, can look forward to a £30,000 windfall.
Australian Neil Robertson has become the first player to make a maximum 147 break in the final of the UK Championship on Sunday.
Selby then eased through his evening quarter-final against Matthew Selt 6-1 with a top break of 72 to set up a repeat of the 2013 final – won 10-7 by Robertson.
Only one could survive the heavyweight clash, and the final between Robertson and Liang will be historic as the first UK Championship final to feature two overseas players, although Robertson has always been a resident of Cambridge and world number 29 Liang bases himself in Romford. “If I went back in time, there would still be nothing I could do about it – I just need to hold my hands up and say “well played” because he was awesome”.
Robertson added: “I did to Mark what he has done to me in the past a number of times where, in the first two frames, I have made a couple of really good clearances”.
And when Selby made an early 52 break in the opening frame the world number one looked to be enjoying the occasion, however it swiftly turned sour. In the second frame, I’m in the balls and I potted a pink to go into the pack.
A 138 followed and he reached 49 in the next before finally allowing Fu a chance which he took with 64.
“I made a great start with three centuries, then he put me under a lot of pressure from 5-2”, said Liang.
“I played well and I was competing with him at all levels, so I’m just disappointed not to win because it’s was a tough draw”.
Liang, the Chinese 28-year-old who has struggled to build on early career promise, slugged his way through four slow, often excruciating frames to clinch a 6-4 win. At 5-2 up I missed the same, an easy pink, and he cleared up.
“But if you miss chances, that happens”.
Selby did not play badly but he simply missed crucial balls at the worst possible moments and, trailing 4-0 at the mid-session interval, could not recover as Robertson closed out the match.
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On the other table, China’s Liang Wenbo also needed an 11th frame to get past Hong Kong’s Marco Fu, having started the match with three straight centuries.
