This afternoon saw the first seven frames of a possible 17 played between Neil Robertson and Matthew Stevens in the final of the inaugural Bahrain Championship. Click below to read what happened…
Neil Robertson 4-3 Matthew Stevens
Australia’s Neil Robertson goes into tonight’s second session with a 4-3 lead, but I suspect that it will be Matthew who will be the happier of the two as at one point he was 4-1 down.
Indeed Robertson started the match in absolutely brilliant form, racing to a 3-0 lead in no time with breaks of 129, 117 and 96 as Stevens could only sit and watch. Crucially however, with Robertson looking set to make it four from four, he played a poor shot onto the final red and missed it as a result, allowing Stevens in to clear and win the frame by one point.
Though Robertson recovered after the interval to make it 4-1, he wasn’t playing as well as at the start of the match and Stevens took full advantage, taking the final two frames of the session to get back to within just one frame of Neil at 4-3.
Though he leads, Robertson will be disappointed not to be at least 5-2 in front because he played much the better snooker of the two during that session and at one point looked like running away with it as he seemingly couldn’t miss.
At 4-3 though, Stevens will surely be pretty pleased with the scoreline and will fancy his chances going into the second session. It promises to be a great end to a very entertaining tournament…