The 2007 Masters (officially the 2007 SAGA Insurance Masters) was a professional non-rankingsnooker tournament that took place from 14 to 21 January 2007 at the Wembley Arena in London, England. It was the 33rd edition of the tournament. In a slight change for 2007, there were 19 competitors, as opposed to 18 up until 2006. The top 16 seeds for ranking events were automatically invited, while the other players entered a qualifying tournament for the right to one of three wild-card places. The two remaining places were granted by the game's governing body at their discretion to Jimmy White and Ding Junhui. Stuart Bingham won the qualifying tournament.
Ronnie O'Sullivan won his third Masters title by defeating Ding Junhui 10–3 in the final. With a noticeably partisan crowd, a visibly upset Ding went to shake O'Sullivan's hand after the latter won the 12th frame to go 9–3 in front, apparently believing that the match was over. The two walked arm-in-arm out of the arena. After O'Sullivan clinched the match in the following frame, it later transpired that Ding had indeed believed the match was best-of-17 frames.
In the preliminary "wild-card round", the three wild-card players were drawn against the players seeded 14th, 15th and 16th:[2][3][4] During the course of his match against Anthony Hamilton, Ding Junhui became the 28th and youngest ever player to score a maximum 147 break on live television. Aged 19 years and 288 days, he broke the previous record set by Ronnie O'Sullivan in 1997 who was then 21 years and 137 days old. This was also just the second maximum in the history of the Masters.[5]
