Masters Snooker talking points: Stuart Bingham, Kyren Wilson and Jack Lisowski under the microscope

• Masters final report: Bingham blitz claims Masters crown

Ball Run Bingham just brilliant

Stuart Bingham, 2020 Dafabet Masters Champion.

He'll say that to himself before he turns off the light on Sunday night and if he doesn't, he should.

After a week in the pressure cooker that is the Masters, four matches against the best snooker players on the planet, it is Bingham who is the last man standing, the undefeated.

The nickname he owns, Ball Run, would suggest he enjoys more than his fair share of good fortune and in the first session of a brilliant final with Ali Carter that simmered and then exploded into life, he probably did. But boy he deserved his victory.

It began by seeing off a past world champion, a three-time Crucible victor no less in Mark Williams, the Welshman promising another resurgence having found some form in qualifying for the European and German Masters before Christmas.

He was swatted away with consummate ease by Bingham and when Kyren Wilson surged into a 4-1 lead in their quarter-final, Bingham finally showed the form that has deserted him for large parts of the season but had powered him to World Championship glory back in 2015.

Five years later he was plotting his way to another Triple Crown success, the second of his career and his maiden Masters title.

Five frames on the bounce later and Wilson was dispatched before David Gilbert, silky smooth and seemingly unstoppable en route to the semi-finals, was overpowered in front of a packed and raucous London crowd who ensured an electric atmosphere on Saturday night.

If Gilbert found it tough to produce his best under such conditions, Bingham revelled in it, and it was just the same in the final 24 hours later when he produced some of the best snooker of his career to come from 7-5 behind to beat Carter 10-8 and claim Masters glory.

If neither player were on song in the afternoon, the evening session was in complete contrast though Bingham took his time to warm to the task and looked all at sea until the mid-session interval afforded him the chance to gather his thoughts and refocus his mind.

Nevertheless, with a rampant Carter now on the charge it was going to require something special to wrestle back the initiative and indeed win the match.

But that's just what Bingham did, belying the magnitude of the occasion and the position he found himself in to reel off breaks of 64, 85, 58, 88 and 109 in the most remarkable display of snooker you could ever wish to see.

That this came in the final of the second biggest event on the snooker calendar, and from a position of almost crisis, was even more impressive. Put simply, it was a stunning performance. It was the performance of a champion, a Masters champion.

We don't talk about Stuart Bingham when we discuss the pantheon of 'great snooker' players. The Ronnie O'Sullivans, the John Higgins, or even Judd Trumps. And maybe we're right not to, but should Bingham add a UK Championship to his already illustrious CV and complete the Triple Crown set as it were, we might have to.

In meantime, Sheffield is already peaking over the horizon and Bingham is sure to be a threat to all as he eyes up a second World Championship.

Wilson battles with form and mind

A little over a year ago Kyren Wilson looked to have the world at his feet, in snooker terms anyway, but the subsequent 12 months have been littered with disappointments as he desperately tries to match his own high expectations in the most competitive of sports.

Wilson arrived at the 2019 Masters with a growing reputation following his excellent start to last season and a heartbreaking defeat to Ronnie O'Sullivan in the Champion Of Champions had seen his stock rise even further.

It wasn't just on the table where Wilson was looking the part, too. Having seen off Judd Trump with the minimum of fuss in the early throes of that Champion Of Champions run, Wilson was quick to offer his own opinion on Trump's apparent downturn in fortunes in his post-match press conference.

It might have been ill-advised but it certainly lit something in Trump and the media alike and snooker was now being promised the sort of rivalry we had enjoyed from the likes of Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins, Steve Davis and Steven Hendry, and Hendry and Jimmy White.

It didn't materialise. Wilson and Trump's eagerly anticipated clash in the first round of the Masters proved disappointingly one-sided as Trump waltzed through the grudge match before going on to title glory, adding to his Northern Ireland success two months earlier and beginning a relentless rise up the rankings that was completed when he won the World Championship at the Crucible Theatre in the spring.

For Wilson, victory at the German Masters in January got him back on track but that was to prove his highlight of 2019 with his form taking something of a nosedive and his confidence clearly suffering.

Wilson blew a 5-1 lead when on the cusp of beating O'Sullivan in the quarter-finals of the Shanghai Masters at the beginning of this this season and that was to prove a sign of things to come, as he surrendered a similarly sizeable advantage against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the semi-finals of the World Open not long after.

There would be no repeat of his Champions Of Champions heroics and by now Wilson was making a habit of losing close matches he would have been expected to come through earlier in a career that looked set to go right to the very top thanks an apparently rock-solid temperament.

That temperament is now beginning to look a little flaky, the layers being peeled back with each and every tough beat to reveal a young man battling with himself as much as the snooker table.

Having beaten Jack Lisowski in comfortable fashion in the first round last week, Wilson's swagger was back and when he cruised into a 4-1 lead over Stuart Bingham in their quarter-final encounter, we were reminded of the dynamite long potter with a tactical game that belied his young age.

A couple of hours later it was all over, Bingham reeling off five frames on the spin as Wilson had no answers in the face of yet another gut-wrenching comeback. It was achingly familiar and the Triple Crown success that had once appeared a formality now seems further away than ever.

One of the most interesting moments from the last seven days was Wilson's appearance on an excellent feature aired on the BBC where he talked about his hopes for his career and his loss to Mark Allen in the final of the Masters in 2018.

It was a match many observers felt he would win, and Wilson clearly expected to prevail. So much so that he revealed that he has still to get over the hurt of losing a match of that magnitude, one in which he failed to find anywhere near his best form.

And maybe therein lies the problem for the 28-year-old. The carefree way of playing that typifies the likes of Lisowski and Trump just doesn't sit well with him. Wilson wants it too much, the defeats hurt that bit more and when the roll of the dice starts to go against him, perhaps his insatiable desire for success tortures his mind in a sport where mental strength is everything.

With the defence of his German Masters impending, Wilson will be desperate to find a way to recapture that winning feeling, that killer instinct too, and perhaps managing expectations and starting to enjoy the game again might be a good place to start.

Jack still the lad

If Kyren Wilson might be guilty of trying too hard and wanting success too much, I'm not sure the same charge can be laid on Jack Lisowski.

Lisowski has always been a rich talent and Mark Selby recently went as far as to suggest that he might be the most naturally gifted player to grace the sport since Ronnie O'Sullivan.

High praise indeed and last season certainly suggested Lisowski was getting closer to the target, a wonderfully consistent campaign including two finals at major events, yet still that breakthrough success evaded him.

At 28 years of age, it is not surprising that many of us are starting to get just a little bit impatient but following a slow start to this season, Lisowski again reminded us of his capabilities with a run to the final of the Scottish Open just before Christmas.

At first glance this appeared to be the new and improved Lisowski, one good enough to edge out Mark Allen in a deciding frame to their semi-final before he competed hard with Selby for large periods of the final.

And it wasn't just big breaks and long potting either, Lisowski packing a punch in the safety department and putting it up to one snooker's finest ever tacticians.

Fast forward to the Masters and there were high hopes that Lisowski's big moment could finally arrive as a favourable draw, one which pitted him against an out-of-form Wilson in the first round, certainly gave him the opportunity to enjoy a good run in London.

After breaks of 56 and 72 had seen him glide into a 2-0 lead, things certainly appeared to be running to Lisowski's script but from there on in he produced a limp display, one devoid of fight or nous, and by the time Wilson had completed an impressive comeback to win 6-2, Lisowski looked relieved to be put out of his misery.

Talent and flair will only take you so far - Trump is testament to that - but that willingness to scrap and fight was something so badly missing from Lisowski's game last week. The more he needed to absorb pressure and tighten up his game, the more danger he sought and the more he missed; the more reckless he became.

By the finish, it was a case of man against boy but it shouldn't have been that way, Lisowksi's superior head-to-head record showing that the left-hander had the game to take down Wilson, particularly from 2-0 in front. Yet from the moment he missed frame-ball pink with the rest he looked a shell of the player he had been in the early part of the contest.

Sure, to lose the frame in that manner was a body blow but Lisowski has overcome much worse in his life already and his response was so disappointing.

The talent is there, of that there is no doubt, but for Lisowksi's career to take the path we have all expected for so long, he needs to get smarter, he needs to get stronger, and he must learn to make the rest his friend again.