The fourth event of the PIOS is down to the semi-final stage, read on to see who has made it…
To follow the results and access all information relating to the event, please click here.
The top of the draw saw two nailbiting quarter-finals this morning, the first involving Grimsby’s Stuart Carrington and Stephen Rowlings from Chorley. Eventually it was Rowlings who took the match 5-4 and became the final man to progress to this evening’s semi-finals.
Rowlings will face former world number 6 Mike Hallett, another player from Grimsby who is having his best ever week on the PIOS. Already guaranteed to move right up the standings with his 160 points this week, could Mike regain his place on the tour for the first time since 2004/5? It is early says but it would be some achievement for the 49 year old.
His win quarter-final win today was as dramatic as you could wish to see as he came through a black ball finish with Lee Page earlier today. Janie Watkins describes it on the GSC forums:
Phew! you should have seen the end of the match – talk about drama!
Mike got in to get last red, up to the brown, and then added blue. He needed pink, Lee needed both and black was tight on the side rail.
Lee tried to clip the black out on a safety with the pink and end up fluking the pink off about four cushions!Mike’s face was a picture!
couple of shots later, I’m not quite sure what Lee was attempting, but I think it was round the angles safety, anyway after a couple of cushions it was heading straight into the centre pocket, well how it stopped without dropping none of us knew, but one more roll he’d have fluked the black for victory, as it was he left it hanging for Mike.
In the bottom half of the draw we can see that Jamie O’Neill has made it through to the semi-finals where he will play Bolton’s Craig Steadman. O’Neill has been strong all week, winning his first four matches 4-1 before defeating Event One winner Bjorn Haneveer 5-1 in his quarter-final.
Steadman meanwhile has been similarly dominant, defeating strong players such as Alex Borg, Ben Woollaston and Michael Wild (who made the highest break of the week, a 138 earlier on), to progress to the semis. Having won the Pontin’s Open at the recent Autumn Festival, Steadman has clearly started the season well and looks let to move into the top eight automatic qualifying spots for the main tour with this week’s results.
The semi-finals will begin at 4pm today so I will try to post about those results before the Premier League action tonight.