Wednesday evening as the veteran Steve Davis takes on yesterday’s surprise winner Adrian Gunnell while Judd Trump meets Joe Perry. Click below to read what is going on in both matches…
Judd Trump 5-2 Joe Perry
Bristol’s Judd Trump today took full advantage of his first round bye and beat the in-form Joe Perry to reach his first ever ranking event quarter-final.
In what was a strange old match, Perry got off to the better start by taking the opening frame with a break of 70 and could well have gone 2-0 up, but he failed to take his chance and eventually allowed Judd in to snatch the frame late on. The 19 year old then did likewise in frame three as he stole the frame on the colours before Perry showed his class to level the scores once again at 2-2.
Following the mid-session interval every frame was to be incredibly tight but somehow Judd managed to steal the lot of them. It was a really strange match and to be honest Joe looked to be the better player, with a much better pot success stat, but Trump got in at the right times and made the most of his opportunities. In the end he did brilliantly to win the last frame as he actually needed a snooker at one point. Having got it and forced Perry into a miss, Trump then held his nerve and made a great clearance under pressure.
Great result for Judd this as so far he has struggled in front of the TV cameras I think. He looked a bit edgy at times tonight but he won the match against a very good player and perhaps this result will help him in the future. Now in his first quarter-final it will be interesting to see how he copes.
Perry will be incredibly disappointed because for once this season he managed to avoid Ronnie O’Sullivan in the draw and he hasn’t taken advantage. Seems very much like a lost opportunity for him and he will be hoping to make amends in Bahrain before he potentially faces O’Sullivan early on again at the UK Championship.
Judd Trump 5-2 Joe Perry 10-78(70), 69-40, 72-52, 27-96(42,54), 74(59)-47(47), 57-42, 64(33)-63
Steve Davis 5-4 Adrian Gunnell
At 0:10am this morning Steve Davis finally overcame the challenge posed by Shaun Murphy’s conqueror Adrian Gunnell to reach a second successive quarter-final.
Neither player really played well but Gunnell in particular looked very edgy early on as he pretty much failed to get anything right and allowed Steve Davis to open up a 3-0 lead. With Davis still not firing however, Gunnell finally was able to take advantage of a chance in the last frame before the interval and kept himself in it with a break of 84 for 3-1.
After the interval Davis, still using the tactic of breaking off by rolling into the pack of reds, still struggled to find his game and Adrian really began to get into it with breaks of 85 and 105 to level things up. Davis won a tight frame to lead again at 4-3 but then came the longest frame of the tournament which after nearly an hour, Gunnell won to force the match into a decider.
Both had their chances in this frame and indeed Gunnell looked to be favourite for a long part of it, but eventually a Davis snooker forced an error from him and let Steve in for a superb clearance, his best of the match when it most mattered.
Steve doesn’t score heavily these days but he remains a tough player to get past and will be hoping for a kind draw in the next round to reach his first semi since the Welsh Open a couple of years ago. Gunnell meanwhile will be terribly disappointed to have failed at this stage for the fourth time in his career now, particularly as he was probably the better player during the match. Still he has at least done his chances of a top 32 spot next season the world of good.