Global Snooker
Day two of the China Open qualifiers saw the return to form of Thai superstar James Wattana gather pace as he blitzed Joe Delaney to reach the third qualifying round, while Tom Ford, Tony Drago and Robert Milkins also kept their already excellent seasons on track with further wins…
Note that due to time constraints, the provisional rankings will be updated at the end of the week.
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James Wattana started the 2009/10 season slowly with first round defeats in the Shanghai Masters and Grand Prix tournaments but he is now beginning to find his form and today recorded a 5-0 victory over Irishman Joe Delaney to reach the third round. Next up for him will be an interesting tie with Martin Gould, a player who was arguably the biggest improver of last season but has failed to recapture that sort of form this time around.
The only other 5-0 winner of the day was Leicester’s Tom Ford who won his seventh straight match at Pontin’s with ease against Neath youngster Michael White this morning. The only disappointment for Tom would have been the fact that he missed out on a second career 147, suffering a kick on the 15th red and seeing the break end on 112 as a result. Still, as nice as the kudos and the extra prize money would have been, the ranking points could ultimately prove to be far more significant as he looks to reclaim a place inside the world’s top 48. With a tie against the out of form Jimmy Michie to come, we could be set for a mouthwatering clash between Tom and Judd Trump at the end of the week…
Today was an excellent day for SightRightUK’s Stephen Feeney because as well as seeing Tom win, both Barry Pinches and Matt Couch also came through against David Gray and Paul Davies respectively to book last 64 ties. Having won 5-0 yesterday David must have felt good about his chances coming into today but Barry has shown improvement recently and without recording any breaks of note, emerged a 5-2 winner. Couch meanwhile got back to winning ways after his early exit in the Welsh Open with victory over Paul Davies who has now won just one opening match from five played this year.
One of the most eagerly anticipated matches today by many fans was that between former world champion John Parrott and the evergreen Tony Drago. While the old saying might tell you that form is temporary, class is permanent however, today the match went very much the way of the form man as Tony raced into a 3-0 lead and never really looked back. Having made at least the third round of every ranking event so far this season it is surely a certainty now that Tony will finish the season ranked inside the all-important top 64 and be back for another attempt in 2010/11.
2009/10 has not been an outstanding one for Mark Joyce so far but he produced a fabulous comeback from 3-0 down today to see off Welshman Ian Preece and book a tie with Scottish veteran Alan McManus tomorrow. Rod Lawler too was able to improve upon a poor recent run by recording a very impressive 5-4 win over the in-form Matt Selt.
LATEST:
In the final match to finish this evening Jimmy White has been edged out 5-4 by Xiao Guodong as his hopes of retaining his place inside the top 64 at the end of the season suffered another blow. Leading 4-3 he looked to be the favourite but Xiao came back strongly to secure victory and a tie with Mark Davis tomorrow.