I was out today but since I got home I watched the last session and flukily caught it pretty much from where I was up to when it went off air when I went back onto Eurosport HD, only missed a frame and a half
Observations - very scrappy match, some tense frames notably the one Burnett won to get to 7-6 which was full of drama. Carter was feeling the heat and messing up golden chances but the telling thing for me was how differently Burnett played to earlier in the week. He was dollying everything and it was very frustrating. After the frame to 7-6 I was actually pulling for him but some of his shot choices were dire. He was playing some very good containing safety but he never tried to do anything with it. He was happy with white on a cushion instead of pushing for the initiative and getting the white behind a colour and it left it for Carter to be the aggressor.
In the interview with Cliff Thorburn he says he didn't like playing against plain ball players who just get the white into touch, he preferred playing players who put spin on the ball. Todays final showed the difference between the two and showed why one is in the top 4 and the other outside the top 32.
Take this for a frustrating shot choice from Burnett in the very last frame. He had just potted a red dead weight along the black cushion and left himself this scenario:
So where is the best place to put the white? It's pretty obviously behind the green and blue. This is what I thought he would play:
There's plenty of room for error. The key thing was to block the left hand side of the table as you see on tv. With the above shot he could leave the white where I put it or 1ft too short or too long and he would have had the advantage. He thought about it for a bit, and then he played this shot:
He was obviously trying to get the white behind the brown looking at the diagram, but he was nowhere near, didn't hit it hard enough and didn't have the right line anyway and he left Carter to play this shot:
After which he dollied the white behind the brown snookering Burnett on both reds and it was game over.
I use this example because I have it to hand but there were numerous similar scenarios throughout the last session where Burnett played the wrong shot and it cost him dearly. You could put it down to pressure of his first ranking event final but either you know the right shots or you don't. Burnett played a lot of good safety shots but a lot of them were nothing safety shots. He played what he went for and hit them 10 out of 10, but he didn't ever force the issue and play the shots that would more likely reap him rewards. As I said, it is probably the reason he's never risen higher up the rankings because he is a good potter and breakbuilder when he gets going.
Well played Carter anyway. He deserved it after his performance yesterday and I don't doubt he would've raised his game had he been playing a top player in the final instead of a lower ranked player having the tournament of his life.