Day three from Sheffield and it has been an eventful one as the likes of Steve Davis, Jimmy White and Ken Doherty have all been sent crashing out of the tournament in their opening matches. Click below for more…
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- Please note that points earned this week will not appear on the projected seedings list until AFTER the Welsh Open
Back among the top 48 for the first time since the 2006/7 season, it was not to be a happy return for Jimmy White today as he found himself on the wrong end of a 5-1 scoreline against talented youngster Sam Baird who continues his fine run at the Academy this week. Standing between Sam and a place at the venue will be Mark Davis, a man hoping to maintain his unblemished record of having qualified for each full-ranking event so far this season.
It was not to be a good day for Mark’s namesake Steve as the six-times world champion lost heavily to Ian McCulloch, the man from Preston gaining swift revenge for his defeat to Davis at the same stage of the UK Championship qualifiers back in October with top breaks of 74, 75 and 56. Ian’s reward is a clash with Barry Hawkins tomorrow, Barry having won their most recent previous meeting at the 2010 World Championship qualifiers.
Having defeated former world champion Ken Doherty to claim a place at the Crucible back in 2011, Jimmy Robertson today repeated the feat, this time with a break of 100 in the deciding frame to move into the last 48 of the World Open qualifiers. While the result is another blow for Doherty, who currently finds himself ranked outside of the top 32 for the first time this season, it is another excellent one for Jimmy who now meets the man who edged Doherty out of that bracket at the last cut-off, Rory McLeod.
Elsewhere, both Matt Selt and Jamie Burnett won their opening matches against Tony Drago and David Gilbert to get some important ranking points on the board, as did Robert Milkins who was a 5-1 winner against young Sam Craigie.
There was also an impressive win for Alfie Burden who having struggled for results during the past 18 months recorded a 5-1 victory against Jack Lisowski to boost his chances of moving back into the world’s top 64 by the end of the season.
Finally there were also good results for Dave Harold and Mike Dunn against Joe Jogia and Tian Pengfei respectively, while Liang Wenbo was taken to a deciding frame by Welsh youngster Michael White before eventually coming through.