A belated look at the notable results from event five of the Pontin’s World Pro-Am Series that took place at Prestatyn last weekend…
Winner
The event which took place on the 18th and 19th October, was won by Leeds’ Peter Lines who defeated fellow professional Paul S. Davison in the final. His second win of the series so far this season, this will move Peter up to second in the rankings which you can view here at GSC. Defeating some other in-form players such as Leo Fernandez, this will hopefully give him a confidence for the tough second round match that he faces in the Bahrain qualifiers against Jimmy White next week. Davison meanwhile comes up against Stefan Mazrocis in the first round.
Other professionals
The standout result of the event to me is Stephen Craigie’s 4-2 win over world number 21 Stuart Bingham at the last 16 stage. Whilst only being a pro-am match over a relatively short distance, a win over a player as highly ranked and as talented as Bingham is another impressive milestone in Craigie’s career. Still 18, the Geordie youngster has already reached the third qualifying round of ranking events twice this season and surely it is only a matter of time before he records a really big win somewhere down the line. His run this weekend was ended in the next round by Leo Fernandez in a tight match though.
Another big name in the event was Ireland’s Joe Swail, the highest ranked player involved. He made smooth progress to the semi-finals, defeating last season’s PIOS leader Kuldesh Johal, before his hopes were ended by Peter Lines. Hopefully the match practice will have done him good as he has not had the best of starts to the season.
The other main tour professionals involved were Andrew Norman, Matt Selt and David Grace, though their runs were less successful. There were plenty of former professionals involved too but in the main it was the main tour professionals who showed their class to occupy three of the semi-final spots. Still, Leo Fernandez appears to have started the season in strong form and it will be interesting to see whether he can get back on the main tour. Defeat in his opening match of the fourth PIOS event this week will not have helped his cause however.