Nearly half-way through the second of the new PTC events and the biggest story so far has been the run of former professional Stephen Craigie who has ended the tournaments of both Jimmy White and Event One maximum man Kurt Maflin. David Grace has also impressed…
Leading 3-0 having just made breaks of 83 and a terrific 143, Jimmy White must have felt confident that he would progress safely to the next round of the ongoing Players Tour Championship event over in Sheffield. Young Craigie however is a player with a strong junior pedigree and he fought back well to turn the tables and complete a 4-3 victory.
Having recorded such an impressive result he managed to go from strength to strength in his second match against Kurt Maflin, the man who made his first professional 147 break during the first PTC event recently and completed a 4-0 victory to book his place in the third round which is currently in progress.
As is to be expected, many of the remaining matches during the early rounds have seen the top players progress but there have been some notable exceptions, namely Andrew Higginson and Jamie Burnett who have lost out to amateur pair Adam Duffy and David Grace respectively.
Scotland’s Anthony McGill was another who put in an impressive performance, seeing off Jimmy Michie 4-1 with top runs of 104 and 75 to book a tie with another veteran, Dave Harold.
Coming close to completing a second round upset was Belgian prodigy Luca Brecel who led the Pinner Potter MArtin Gould 3-2 at one stage this evening before eventually losing out 4-3 to his professional opponent.
As far as the new and improved schedule is concerned, hopefully we will not see any 3am finishes this evening but at the time of writing there remains a fair amount of snooker to be played yet. Follow the action over at Global Snooker…