The 2025 World Grand Prix final will be contested between Neil Robertson and Stuart Bingham at the Kai Tak Arena in Hong Kong on Sunday.
The pair emerged from their semi-final ties on Saturday to move one step closer to capturing the ranking title and claiming the £180,000 top prize.
In the first last-four clash, Robertson edged a topsy-turvy battle with Shaun Murphy in a deciding frame.
The Australian raced out of the blocks with two early century breaks but then lost five out of the next six frames to trail 5-3.
Yet Robertson left the Magician pointless thereafter, scoring an unanswered sequence of 344 points across the concluding three frames to snatch victory.
Bingham had been a considerable underdog ahead of the second semi-final against a world number one who had compiled four century breaks in his 5-0 quarter-final rout of Hossein Vafaei.
Judd Trump contributed another brace of tons in this affair, but the elder Englishman controlled most of the other parts of the showdown.
Bingham won five out of the opening six frames and withstood a brief rally from this opponent before securing a 6-3 triumph.
The wins for both Robertson and Bingham were important in respect of a couple of reasons other than simply reaching a big-time final.
Robertson has moved up to 13th on the provisional Race to the Crucible rankings to all but secure his automatic seeding at the season-concluding World Championship.
Bingham, meanwhile, has broken into the top 16 on the one-year rankings so will feature at the upcoming Players Championship in Telford.
Should the 48 year-old beat Robertson on Sunday and pocket an additional £100,000, he will also rise back into the top 16 on the official two-year list.
While Bingham is bidding for a seventh career ranking title and a first since his success at the 2019 Gibraltar Open, Robertson is on course for his 25th at this level.
The Melbourne man has already tasted glory this season, winning the English Open in September where he edged Wu Yize in the final.
Robertson will begin the 2025 World Grand Prix final as the favourite, but Bingham has already proved that he is in rejuvenated form this week.
In addition to Trump, the player known as Ballrun has counted the likes of Mark Williams and Mark Selby among his other conquests.
Bingham surprisingly boasts a superior head-to-head record from his prior encounters with Robertson in all competitions (12-10).
They haven’t crossed paths in a ranking event since 2019, however, when Robertson got the best of a close duel in that year’s Welsh Open final.
It promises to be a special occasion at the Kai Tak Arena, which is reported to have sold out and thousands of fans expected to attend.
The 2025 World Grand Prix final takes place over 19 frames with sessions commencing at 5am and 11:30am UTC.
Featured photos credit: WST
