Yesterday saw the four quarter-finals played at the Brazil Masters and through to the semis are four former world champions after another good day of snooker. Click below to read who was able to progress…
Quarter-Final Results
Mark Selby 3-4 Peter Ebdon
Igor Figueiredo 2-4 Graeme Dott
Shaun Murphy 4-1 Ricky Walden
Stephen Hendry 4-0 Ali Carter
Semi-Final Fixtures
Peter Ebdon v Graeme Dott
Shaun Murphy v Stephen Hendry
First man through to the semi-finals was Peter Ebdon who sprung a surprise by ousting newly crowned world number one and Shanghai Masters champion Mark Selby from the tournament yesterday.
While Peter was not at his best by any means, it was clear from an early stage that Mark Selby was struggling to string anything together and Ebdon took avantage by winning three of the first four frames to put himself one away from the next round. To his credit Mark dug in and took the next two to force a decider but in the decider it was his miss on a difficult red following an escape from a snooker from Ebdon that would prove to be his last shot as Peter cleared to secure a 4-3 win.
Peter will now meet Graeme Dott who saw off home favourite Igor Figueiredo in an entertaining match during which the Brazilian remained well in contention at 2-2 before Graeme’s class eventually told as he ran out a 4-2 winner. A word though for Igor who has this week reminded people why he is a main tour professional and hopefully a few potential sponsors in his homeland will have sat up and taken notice of his performances.
In the evening session Shaun Murphy won a quickfire contest with Ricky Walden 4-1 to become the third man through to the semi-finals, clinically taking advantage of a couple of errors that came from Ricky’s cue by taking frames in one-visit.
Next for him will be Stephen Hendry who produced as good a performance as I have seen from him for some time now to defeat Ali Carter 4-0, remarkably the Scot’s first win against a top eight player in any competition since the 2010 China Open.
Stephen started the match well to take the first two frames in no time without Ali being able to pot a ball before adding the third after Ali left the cue ball short attempting to roll up to the brown and then failed to get the subsequent escape safe. By this stage Ali was clearly out of sorts and despite a miscue in frame four Hendry was able to get over the line.
As an aside I did notice yesterday that Stephen appears to be cueing with the cue closer to the centre of his chin this week, similar to how he used to back in the 1990’s compared to more recent times when it has been obviously under his right-eye. Whether this will make any difference remains to be seen but if nothing else it does demonstrate that he is still attempting to find solutions to his recent struggles.