So it’s day one of the qualifiers for the new Bahrain Championship event and this morning’s six qualifying matches have now been completed. Click below for the results…
Mahitthi rushes into round 2
With the World Amateur Championship taking place this week, last year’s winner Atthasit Mahitthi showed that he deserves his place on the tour for this season as he raced past James McBain without losing a frame this morning. This is the first time that the two had met since the 1997 World U21 Championship when again Mahitthi came out on top. His reward for his latest victory is a tie with Lee Spick tomorrow morning for the chance to play former top 16 man David Gray in round three.
And others are soon to follow…
Indeed it has been a fairly one-sided morning session so far as Rodney Goggins, Robert Stephen, Stefan Mazrocis and Paul Davison all won comfortably as well. Goggins won 5-1 to make it four defeats from four so far this season for Michael Georgiou as the snooker “Hot Shot” continues to struggle on the main tour. The others all won 5-2, good results for players who need every point they can get this season as they fight to keep a place on the main tour.
Comeback king
The one big exception though was the match between Welshman Andrew Pagett and Thai number one Supoj Saenla which went all the way to a deciding frame. This looked unlikely at one point as Saenla went into a 3-0 lead early on, but Pagett rallied and fought back to win it 5-4. Next up for him is Mark Joyce tomorrow morning.
Byes
In case anyone was wondering why there are only six matches this morning, Daniel Wells and Peter Lines received byes to the second round as a result of the withdrawals further up the draw, due to the clash with the Premier League in November. Similarly Jamie Jones and Lewis Roberts will receive byes this afternoon.