China Open Daily News – Day Four - Neil Tomkins reports live.
Stuart Pettman is the story of the day. A professional since 1992, Pettman reaches the quarter-final with a 5-2 win over provisional world number one, Allister Carter.
Global-snooker.com caught up with Carter just before his match and he seemed in fine spirits.
He had though, adopted a “win,win” attitude with the option of heading home to begin preparing for his assault on the world title as appealing as extending his run in China.
This may have affected the outcome, but not as much as Pettman’s consistent scoring.
On the main table, Tian Pengfei had the home crowd buzzing with a maximum attempt in frame six. He broke down on the twelfth black, which was the high point for Pengfei, as Higgins booked his quarter-final spot with a 5-2 win.
Ricky Walden failed in his bid to do the Chinese double after winning the Shanghai Masters earlier this season.
Walden took a 3-1 lead into the interval against Stephen Hendry, but it was the Scot who came back strongly winning the next three frames.
Walden hung in with an immaculate 128 break to level at four frames each. Stephen Hendry is arguably the most popular in China, and the Student’s Gymnasium erupted when he sealed victory in the decider.
On the outside table, a war of attrition between Peter Ebdon and Dave Harold was finally settled when Ebdon won 5-3 after almost five hours of play.
Harold and Walden consoled each other, joined some friends and went out to see what one of the most amazing cities in the world had to offer.
The Rocket was set for launch in the evening session and it launched in spectacular style. Back-to-back century breaks in the first two frames helped O’Sullivan to a 3-1 lead over Ding’s conqueror, Xiao Guodong.
The 20-year-old made it hard for the world champion after the interval. Xiao closed to within one frame at 2-3 and 3-4 but O’Sullivan closed the match with 96 break.
Ronnie told the Chinese media afterwards that "it was not a great performance" and that it was similar to his whole season, “inconsistent”. He made breaks of 124, 104, 96 , 84 which shows just how high his expectations are.
Global-snooker has said for a few months now that Graeme Dott is on his way back. We could see a change when he played Stephen Maguire in Wembley at the start of the year. He has continued to improve gradually and his win over Mark Selby suggested that he is somewhere near his best.
Five breaks over 50, including a 109, proved too much and sent the Jester back home to Leicester.
Ryan Day and Shaun Murphy completed the quarter-final line up with wins over Mark King and Neil Robertson respectively.
Friday is quarter-final day with Higgins v O’Sullivan the pick of the matches. One local fan told Global-Snooker.com – "this is my dream to watch Mr Ronnie and Mr John”.
See ya tomorrow…
