Prior to the tournament it has been argued that the tournament would benefit from two last 32 matches being played on day one as well as the obligatory wildcard rounds and today showed exactly why as Neil Robertson and Stephen Hendry booked their places in the second round with deciding frame victories. Click below for a round-up of the day and a brief look ahead to Tuesday’s action…
Neil Robertson today became the first man to book his place in the last 16 with a 5-4 victory against Jamie Cope, winning the last two frames from 4-3 down. Sporting a natural, curly-haired appearance, the change of hairstyle did not do the Australian any harm and with top breaks of 82 and 66, he just about had enough for the man from Stoke who made it as far as the final in Beijing back in 2007.
Awaiting Robertson in the second round will be Scotland’s Stephen Hendry after the seven-time world champion survived a nail-biter against Martin Gould to continue his solid form of late. Both players produced a strong standard from the off, 135 from Hendry in the opener followed later on by a run of 105 from Gould proving to be their respective high-breaks of the match.
The decider however was to be a typically tense affair in which both players, though particularly Martin had chances to win it. The match looked to be over as Hendry missed a tough penultimate red along the cushion, leaving it in the jaws for his opponent as he walked back to his chair and unscrewed his cue. Surprisingly however, there was to be a final twist in the tale as Gould missed the final red and Hendry duly produced a clearance highlighted by a fine shot on the yellow under the circumstances to snatch victory.
Interestingly however as I read back through the day’s chat on Twitter I noticed that there had been a discussion as to whether Hendry had used gamesmanship in the match by unscrewing his cue when he did. Having later watched the ‘incident’ however I feel that it was a total non-story, personally I doubt that I would have even passed comment had it not been mentioned already. To me it was nothing more than a player who thought that he had played his last shot and nothing really to get excited about.
Elsewhere, four of the six professionals involved in wildcard matches today were able to avoid early exits, namely Jimmy White, Peter Ebdon, Mark King and Ben Woollaston. Not so lucky however were Michael Holt and Jamie Jones, Holt losing out to the talented young Li Hang who is among those bidding to regain a place on the main tour via the Q School later this year, while Lu Ning accounted for Wales’ Jones.
Looking ahead to tomorrow, Mark Selby and Stephen Maguire headline the opening session as they look to open their respective tournaments with a win, while later in the day Judd Trump takes on Jimmy White and home hero Ding Junhui begins his quest for a second China Open title.