The Shanghai Masters entered its second day today, and the drama increased massively. The first four matches of today contained the defending champion Ricky Walden who got underway against Mark King and former seven times World Champion Stephen Hendry who faced fellow Scotsman Marcus Campbell.
Afternoon Session
Results
Ricky Walden 5-1 Mark King
73-18, 0-78 (78), 54-39, 74 (51)-45, 91 (84)-17, 67 (59)-13
Stephen Hendry 5-4 Marcus Campbell
8-59 (48), 48-61, 41-72 (54), 0-106 (65,41), 79 (78)-0, 81 (81)-0, 60 (33)-50 (41), 68 (68c)-57(50), 73 (68)-28
Marco Fu 5-4 Nigel Bond
67 (67)-20, 7-113 (85), 4-106 (73), 79 (49)-1, 130 (88)-1, 15-75 (71), 68 (32,31)-40 (36), 28-60, 72 (51)-45
Ryan Day 5-3 Li Yan
121 (111)-0, 70 (58)-16, 64 (64)-78 (78c), 18-76 (75), 39 (34)-68 (51), 81 (71)-28, 68 (38)-1, 61 (45c)-59 (59)
Defending champion Ricky Walden got his campaign under way with an impressive 5-1 victory over Mark King. Walden who took the last three frames with breaks all over 50 seems to be in fine form for the defence of his title. Mark King however will be disappointed not to have made a closer match of it, especially after pulling level at 1-1 with a fine break of 78.
After coming through his wildcard match yesterday, Marcus Campbell had a distinct step up in opponent today in Stephen Hendry. Campbell looking to record another victory over Hendry having previously inflicted the worst defeat of his career upon him with a 9-0 thrashing many years ago in the UK Championship. It looked as if another whitewash was on the table for Hendry as he went into the mid-session interval trailing 4-0. Stephen’s legion of fans could have been forgiven for thinking it would be an early exit for “The Maestro” as Hendry had never won a best-of-nine match after losing the first 4 frames up until now.
In the first four frames, Stephen did have chances but couldn’t make the most of them. After the interval Hendry returned a man on a mission. Whilst perhaps merely trying to reduce the size of an inevitable defeat, Stephen produced two excellent breaks of 78 and 81 with no response in either frame from Campbell to half his arrears. While doing so, Hendry was on course for yet another 147 but unfortunately snookered himself on the 11th black. Campbell would have at least expected to be given a chance to win the match and leading 44-0 in the seventh frame it looked as if it could be the last. Hendry however stuck to the task and edged over the line to move one frame down with two to play.
Again Campbell looked on the brink of victory with a 57 point lead in the next frame only for Stephen Hendry to roll back the years with an absolutely magnificent pressure clearance of 68 to snatch the frame and force a decider. At this point it would appear the momentum was fully with Stephen who would go onto take the decider largely in part to another pressure break of 68.
Whilst for Campbell it will be a massive disappointment of coming so close to another famous win over Hendry but yet so far, Hendry will no doubt be pleased at his resilience and refusal to let his head go down and give up. It is certainly a massive boost to his fans that perhaps realising Stephen is not the player he once was, he is still able to win matches and perhaps win matches which even a few years ago he’d have thrown the towel in.
Another match to go to a final frame was that of Hong Kong’s Marco Fu and World Games champion, Nigel Bond. Fu playing in what must be considered a “home” event for him, finally won the decider to progress to the next round where he will face a former World Champion in either Ronnie o’Sullivan or Graeme Dott. In what appeared to be a very close encounter between the two who were never more than one frame apart, Nigel will be a bit disappointed not to have picked up some valuable ranking points. If it is any consolation to him, he did manage to knock in three breaks over 70 while Fu contributed 3 breaks over 50 in what was a high scoring match.
The final match to be played earlier involved Li Yan the local player who knocked out Gerard Greene in the wildcard round yesterday. He was up against Ryan Day in what would always prove to be a difficult match., especially after losing the opening two frames. Yan hit back however to go in level at the interval with impressive breaks of 78 and 75. Another good break of 51 gave the local player an unlikely 3-2 lead only for Day to find an extra gear and real off three frames in succession including a 45 clearance in the last frame to progress to a Last 16 meeting with either fellow Welshman Matthew Stevens or Northern Ireland star Mark Allen.
Evening Session
Matches