World Snooker Championship: ‘Shocking’ semi-final miss still hurts Mark Allen

Allen was commended for his immediate reaction to the semi-final loss when he paid tribute to 22-year-old winner Yize while acknowledging “I had my chances and blew it, so there’s no point in being a bad loser”.

He hopes he has “many more chances to do it [win a world title] and won’t be remembered for one shot”, but feels there are similarities between his quest to complete snooker’s Triple Crown and Rory McIlroy’s odyssey to finally completing golf’s career Grand Slam at last year’s Masters.

Allen would welcome the opportunity for “a chat with Rory to see how he felt and what he did differently” as he seeks to reach his own carer target.

While his missed black may be an enduring moment of the semi-final, there was another earlier in the match when frame 14 lasted over 100 minutes.

Allen held the lead when eight reds were left covering the black over the right corner pocket, with no ball potted for 55 minutes.

With Allen reluctant for a re-rack, the situation was only resolved when he nudged the black into the pocket for a foul with Wu going on to win the frame, a situation he felt was “handled badly” from a number of angles.

“You’re not really worried about what people are thinking, but just thinking about winning the frame,” Allen reflected.

“I think it was handled badly at the time with the crowd involvement and commentary team didn’t help.

“In hindsight, I’d probably have just taken the re-rack, but I felt I was dominating and had the patience to stay there and win the frame, but it didn’t turn out that way.”