Andy Hicks has defeated Snooker Scene columnist Jordan Brown to win his first match of the season today. Click below to read how he did it and who will be joining him in the third round as the matches are completed…
Note that my provisional rankings have now been fully updated to the end of today.
After an excellent 2008/9 season, Andy Hicks has experienced a difficult start to this campaign, losing his opening two matches. Today however he gave himself a boost by comfortably seeing off Northern Irishman by a 9-4 scoreline. It was a close affair early on as they shared the first six frames but crucially Andy managed to take the next three to come out of the first session with a 5-3 advantage and from there he was able to limit his young opponent to just one more frame.
I am tempted to say that Andy needed the win after a tough start to the season but having played just two events it is hard to really make any sort of judgement about his form! It just shows how important every match is with so few events and despite this being just the third tournament of the season, it is a very useful win for both his ranking and his confidence. Next up will be Mike Dunn, not an easy match but one that he can realistically hope to win.
Two men who have started the season well however are Robert Milkins and Matt Selt and the duo managed to maintain that form today with victories over James Wattana and David Roe respectively. For Milkins the victory was straightforward having moved into a 6-2 lead after the first session with a high break of 111 and he now comes up against Martin Gould. Having played so well in the event last season before eventually losing out to eventual champion Shaun Murphy, Martin will be a tough proposition but having won the Pro Challenge event recently, Robert is a man in form and it will be interesting to see how that one goes.
Selt meanwhile also looked to be cruising, leading 7-1 at the end of the first session but in fairness to the struggling Roe, he fought well and took the first three frames of the evening to give himself half a chance. The gap however proved to be too big and Matt took the next two to record his tenth win out of ten at Pontin’s this season. Next up will be Masters qualifier Rory McLeod.
One man who could not cruise however was Peter Lines who has tonight defeated young Chinese star Xiao Guodong in a deciding frame. Leading 5-3 at the end of the first session, he held a narrow advantage but Xiao hung in there and eventually took it to a 17th and final frame. Peter though was not fazed and produced a terrific century break to win frame and match, booking a third round clash with Preston’s Ian McCulloch in the process.
And congratulations to John Parrott who has proved me wrong by coming through to defeat Patrick Wallace in a deciding frame following a tense match with the Northern Irishman. After his emphatic 9-0 victory in the previous round I had fancied Patrick to get the better of the 1991 world champion who has not enjoyed the best run of results over the last year or so, but John recovered from 3-0 down to lead 5-3 at the end of the first session.
John continued to play well early in the second session but Wallace dug in and managed to come back from behind in frame 16 to force a decider. John though rolled back the years and managed to win the frame in one-visit with a break of 77. His reward will be a match with Dominic Dale while the victory is also a much needed boost to his provisional ranking which was down as low as 60 before today.