Shaun Murphy 2026-27: Led in Every Match He Lost From the Quarters

Shaun Murphy has played 19 matches this season and won 13. Split them at the quarter-finals and you get two different players. Before the last eight he has won 12 of 14. From the quarter-finals on he has won one of five.

The easy reading is that he runs out of steam against the best. The frame scores say something else. In all four of those defeats Murphy was in front at some point, twice by more than a frame. He isn't being outplayed from the start. He is getting ahead and not finishing.

Four matches, four leads

Shanghai Masters, quarter-final, Wu Yize. Murphy lost the first two frames, then won five of the next seven to lead 5–4 in a best of 11. Wu took frame 10 with a 55. In the decider Murphy made a 54 and still lost it 71–62. Wu went out to Judd Trump in the semi-finals; Trump won the event.

China Open, quarter-final, Noppon Saengkham. Murphy led 2–1 and was level at 3–3. The eighth frame went 60–58 to Saengkham, which made it 5–3 instead of 4–4, and Saengkham closed it out 6–4 with an 85. He went on to reach the final. (We wrote about how Saengkham got there.)

English Open, semi-final, Mark Williams. This is the one. Murphy won the first four frames, including a 128, and led 5–1 in a best of 11. He needed one frame. Williams won the next five. In the eighth frame Murphy had 61 on the board and, in Williams' words afterwards, "missed an easy black at 5–2". Williams made a 69 to take it 74–61. Over the last five frames Williams outscored him 362 points to 170, with breaks of 82, 69, 65 and 69, the last in the decider. Williams called a 5–1 comeback something that probably happens "once in a thousand". He then lost the English Open final 9–6 to Ali Carter.

Shenzhen Open, quarter-final, Wu Yize. Murphy led 2–1 and 3–2 with breaks of 104, 98 and 68. Wu answered with 94 and 121 to go 4–3 up. Murphy scrapped the eighth frame 59–57 to force a decider, and Wu made 117 in it. Wu went on to win the Shenzhen Open.

Three of the four went to a deciding frame. The other turned on a two-point frame. Across the four defeats Murphy won 18 frames and lost 23.

It isn't the scoring

Murphy's heavy scoring hasn't gone anywhere. He has made 15 centuries this season, and three came in his five late-round matches: 128 against Williams, 101 against Trump and 104 against Wu.

The gap shows up in the frames where nobody gets away. In the early rounds he won 65 frames and lost 27, and he made a 50 break in 45 frames to his opponents' 23. From the quarter-finals on he won 24 and lost 28, and his opponents made a 50 break in 25 frames to his 15. Some of that is simply who was across the table. Only four of his 14 early-round opponents sit in the top 20 of our Form Rating. From the last eight on he met Wu twice, Saengkham, Williams and Trump, and every one of the four who beat him reached at least the semi-finals.

Late rounds are longer and the opponents better, so a top player's edge shrinks (more on that in our best of 7 against best of 19 piece). What stands out with Murphy is how close he keeps getting before it goes.

The one late-round match he won fits the same pattern from the other side. Against Trump in the English Open quarter-final he trailed 4–3, levelled with a 101, won the ninth 62–52, and after Trump's 112 took the decider with a 67. That was one of three deciders he has won this season. He has lost three, all from the quarter-finals on.

The Wu Yize problem

Two of the four defeats were to Wu, and they come on top of the biggest one. Wu beat Murphy 18–17 in the World Championship final in May, then 6–5 in Shanghai and 5–4 in Shenzhen: three meetings in five months, all settled in the last frame. Add a 6–2 win at the Masters in January and Wu has won four in a row. Since June 2025 the record reads 4–1 to Wu.

What it means for Belfast

None of this says Murphy is out of form. Our Form Rating has him fourth on tour, ahead of his eighth seeding at the Northern Ireland Open, because he keeps winning the matches he is expected to win and pushing the ones he loses to the last frame.

He starts in Belfast against Liam Davies, in the top half of the draw. Wu and Williams are both in the bottom half, so neither can reach him before the final. The early rounds are best of 7, which suits a player who has won 70% of his early-round frames this season. The question is the same one it has been since August: what happens the next time he is a frame from a final.