Even Steve Peters, the sports psychiatrist who has been advising Ronnie O'Sullivan during the championships, looked in need of a lie-down in a darkened room as Mark Selby staged an astonishing fightback in on Monday early stages of the final.
Selby won the first four frames of the afternoon to take the lead for the first time, 11-10, in the best-of-35 match. That meant he had won six in a row after going 10-5 down the previous evening.
There are some players who never know when they are beaten. Think Graeme Dott, think Peter Ebdon and think, too, Selby. O'Sullivan, generally acknowledged as the greatest player there has ever been, does not like coming up against opponents such as these, and Selby just may top the list.
He is a little like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who wanted to fight on after losing both arms - "Just a flesh wound," he declared.
On Sunday, Selby had looked exhausted and out of touch following his 12-hour marathon of a semi-final against Neil Robertson. He was delighted to trail only 10-7 after winning the last two frames and admitted that he had felt shattered.
On Monday, though, he looked rested and reinvigorated and ready to impose his formidable safety play and sheer will as a bloody-minded match player on the more gifted O'Sullivan. As he did so there were nods of approval from The Grinder himself, Canada's Cliff Thorburn, the champion of 1980, whose grimly unremitting style was the despair of a different generation.
O'Sullivan did not look particularly perturbed when he lost the first frame of the session after leaving the brown ball hanging over the centre pocket. Selby had a break of 55 and was confident enough to end the frame with a trick shot, coming off the cushion to pot the black.
But he also won the next three frames to reach the mini-break with an 11-10 lead. He appeared to have blown the last of them when he jawed a potentially frame-winning red in the side pocket. But O'Sullivan played a poor shot on the black to allow Selby to clinch the frame. They call Selby the Jester from Leicester, but that is not always the case. In that crucial 21st frame of the match a member of the audience coughed during the player's back-swing and received a look that might have turned her to stone.
The next frame, when the players returned, was a messy affair, with even simple yellow and green balls proving too much for both of them. When O'Sullivan finally won it to level at 11-11 it was, at 4.30 in the afternoon, the first frame he had won since 10pm on Sunday.
The next frame, too, left fingernails gnawed to the bone. It lasted 50 minutes and its balance swung from one player to the other. It should, ultimately, have been won by O'Sullivan. He had a simple pink into the side pocket to nail it but struck the ball far too hard. It was as if he had misread the score and thought he needed the black. Or maybe his brain, like everyone else in the Crucible Theatre, was a little scrambled.Selby took advantage and went into the evening session leading 12-11.
There were meant to be eight frames played in the afternoon session. But because the first six took so long it was announced that there would be a break. Everyone needed one, including the watching Stephen Fry, who so enjoyed O'Sullivan's free scoring in the 2013 final.
Selby had tied him in knots. And O'Sullivan may have had uncomfortable memories of the 2008 Welsh Open, when Selby beat him 9-8 after coming back from 5-8 down. In the 2010 Masters, too, Selby beat O'Sullivan 10-9 in another tense finish.
Perhaps Selby, who was chasing his first world crown, should be a member of the Royal Mounted Police - the Mounty, according to legend, "Always gets his man".There were few people in Sheffield on Monday who thought Selby could catch up with O'Sullivan, and most of them were related to the Leicestershire player.
O'Sullivan, who was going for his sixth world championship, is known as the best frontrunner in the business. The evening session will answers the questions that really matter.
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