Apologies for the lack of results so far, suffice to say it has been a very busy day at the office! However, the final day of the qualifiers has been unfolding and below are the results and brief reports.
EDIT: Note that my provisional rankings page has now been updated to the end of the Grand Prix qualifiers.
Morning Session
For the second event in a row, veteran Scot Marcus Campbell has ended the hopes of young Judd Trump, this time with a resounding 5-3 victory at Prestatyn. It was a match of good quality with five 50+ breaks between them and at 3-3, was far closer than their Shanghai qualifier last month. From there though it was Campbell who managed to seize the initiative in frame seven with a run of 54 before securing victory in the eighth.
Marcus’ good start to the season goes on and against Joe Perry, a player who has not enjoyed a good 2009 so far, he will fancy his chances of making it into the last 16 of an event for the first time since this tournament back in 2007. For Judd Trump however these are slightly worrying times as he has now lost his opening match in both tournaments so far this season and finds himself slipping down the provisional rankings as a result. It may still only be early days but with just six ranking events in total this season, he cannot afford to be losing too many last 48 matches…
The battle of the Davis’ promised to be a close encounter today but as things turned out it would be an entirely one-sided affair as Mark handed his famous namesake Steve a 5-0 whitewash. Starting the match with breaks of 74 and 106, Mark established his dominance from the outset and having won a closer third frame for 3-0 put himself well on the way to victory.
Following a much improved last 12-18 months, Mark is now notching up wins on a regular basis and though Steve is far from at his peak, a win against him is always a good result. 2007 winner Marco Fu will not be an easy opponent in Glasgow but Marco does tend to lose a few too many matches to players ranked lower than him so it could be an interesting match.
Like Judd Trump however, Steve has now lost both of his two ranking event matches this season and now sees his outside chances of a return to the top 16 for the third time recede further.
In brief, 2006 world champion Graeme Dott was surprisingly hammered 5-0 by fellow Scot Jamie Burnett and so will miss out on playing in front of his home crowd for the second straight year, while Stephen Lee and Barry Hawkins were also surprise casualties.
No such upsets for Ricky Walden and Matthew Stevens however, while Nigel Bond secured an important win over Peter Lines to get some more points on the board.
Barry Hawkins 3-5 Mark Joyce
42(42)-71, 8-69, 38-61, 75(53)-54(36), 67(54)-1, 75(55)-22, 25-74(63), 28-71(46)
Steve Davis 0-5 Mark Davis
0-75(74), 22-106(106), 49-72(54), 0-108(42,61), 41(37)-69
Ricky Walden 5-2 Adrian Gunnell
75(36)-2, 25-80(76), 0-129(115), 74-38, 69(55)-22, 78(66)-4, 64-28
Graeme Dott 0-5 Jamie Burnett
36-89(51), 59(59)-73(38,35), 33-66(34), 63(63)-70(42), 68(60)-75(rsb)
Judd Trump 3-5 Marcus Campbell
77(68)-15, 42(38)-72(59), 17-89(85), 54-10, 6-63, 85(52)-38, 0-86(54), 37(36)-73(39)
Matthew Stevens 5-1 Mike Dunn
69(46)-13, 67(33)-0, 72(42)-53, 60(38)-74, 72(63)-51, 76(65)-52(36)
Nigel Bond 5-3 Peter Lines
61-37, 75-9, 70(44)-60(60), 50-74, 24-61, 13-72(38), 63(62)-23, 69(51)-5
Stephen Lee 3-5 Robert Milkins
93(38)-45, 54-76, 62(49)-18, 0-70(46), 49-62, 46-65, 72(48)-31, 15-53
Afternoon Session
Another good win for Ken Doherty tonight as his resurgence continued against Dave Harold. Amazingly even at this early stage in September, Ken has now already guaranteed that he will earn more ranking points from his 2009/10 campaign than the 7794 that he secured during his nightmare 2008/9 season!
Two other players who have struggled for form during the last year or so are Barry Pinches and Ian McCulloch and both were able to secure narrow 5-4 victories tonight against Michael Holt and Joe Swail respectively.
The highest quality match however was the one between Matt Selt and Fergal O’Brien which saw some sensational scoring. Though the scores are posted below, I will simply reproduce their frame scores as I believe that it tells the story better than any words from me!
Fergal O’Brien 3-5 Matthew Selt
8-88(84), 87(87)-0, 113(113)-8, 93(93)-0, 25-92(88), 28-88(54), 21-118(81), 0-117(81)
Finally, Shanghai Masters finalist Liang Wenbo meanwhile continued his good form with a victory over Dominic Dale tonight to set up another clash with Peter Ebdon in Glasgow, while David Gilbert’s good run came to an end with a 5-2 defeat to Stuart Bingham.