This evening was to see two preliminary round matches for the 2011 Shanghai Masters staged however there was to be no trace of the match between David Hogan and Lucky Vatnani on the livescores…
Adam Duffy moved into the first qualifying round proper of the Shanghai Masters this evening as he resisted a brave comeback from Belgian prodigy Luca Brecel to secure a 5-4 victory at the Academy in Sheffield.
Early on it was Adam who made the stronger start, a top break of 118 seeing him into a 3-1 lead at the mid-session interval and two frames away from repeating his victory against the Belgian during last season’s PTC tour.
16-year-old Brecel however is improving all the time and showed character to level the match at 3-3 before coming close to making it three in a row in frame seven only for Adam to take green and brown to edge back ahead.
From there although Luca was able to force a decider, after a tentative start from both it was Adam who pulled away to eventually win it comfortably and set up a tie with Thai player Passakorn Suwannawat tomorrow.
As for the other match, as mentioned above there was no trace of this on the livescores which leads me to wonder whether India’s Lucky Vatnani’s visa troubles as outlined here are ongoing, despite his hopes in that interview that the problems would be resolved by now.
Hopefully we will receive more news on that tomorrow when the action really gets underway in Sheffield, the first matches kicking off at 10am.