In the afternoon session, O'Sullivan took the first frame with a break of 95, after jousting with Higgins in a safety shot battle for a quarter of an hour. Higgins followed with breaks of 54 and 76 in the second and third frames to go 2–1 ahead. Entering the mid-session interval, O'Sullivan equalled the score at 2–2 with a 107 break. He took the lead with a half-century run in the fifth frame. Higgins potted two balls as O'Sullivan produced runs of 58 and 97 in frames six and seven. Trailing 32–0 in the eighth frame, O'Sullivan missed a pink ball shot to a centre pocket, allowing Higgins to produce a 53 run, and leave O'Sullivan requiring two snookers after a four-point foul. Although O'Sullivan obtained the necessary points, Higgins won the frame on the blue ball to leave it 5–3 at the conclusion of the first session. In the evening session, O'Sullivan took 62 minutes to produce breaks of 79, 75 and 134 to win the match and the tournament. O'Sullivan had a 97 per cent of potting rate success to Higgins' 89 percent at the end of the final and brought his total season century breaks to 25. 1991 world champion and BBC analyst John Parrott likened the statistic to O'Sullivan's 17–4 victory over Hendry in the semi-finals of the 2004 World Snooker Championship, "It is a pleasure to watch. He played every shot in the book and each time the cue ball landed on a sixpence."