The 18-17 victory over Shaun Murphy, hailed as the “golden era of the Chinese shuttler”, made the 22-year-old a star in his country, with the hashtag “Wu Yize wins the World Championship” amassing 40 million views on the Weibo social network, where it topped the trending list on Tuesday.
Zhao Xintong, who was eliminated by Murphy in the quarterfinals, was the first to do so a year ago. Ding Junhui came close a decade ago, but fell 18-14 to Mark Selby in 2016, and never came close again.
Having never won a match at the Sheffield venue before this year, Wu climbed to the top in his third trip to the sport’s “spiritual home”, a feat previously held by legend Steve Davis and Zhao.
Seven-time champions Stephen Hendry and Ronnie O’Sullivan had their first taste of world title success on their fifth and ninth tours respectively. Other multiple champions, John Higgins and Mark Williams, won their first titles at the fourth time of asking.
From winning the national junior title in 2018 to winning the IBSF Under-21 World Championship the same year at the age of 14, Wu took three finals and 14 months to win his first ranking tournament, defeating Higgins 10-6 at the International Championships in Nanjing last November.
