Hard Day's Night for Hendry
A brilliant performance by Ryan Day in front of his home crowd, sent Stephen Hendry crashing out of the totesport.com Welsh Open and Day through to the quarter finals.
The Welsh faithful have had to suffer some tense matches involving their players already this week and the match between Ryan Day from Pontycymmer and seven times World Champion Stephen Hendry was another swings and roundabouts affair.
Day took the opener, albeit needing three scoring chances to clinch the frame.
Hendry responded in more emphatic style with 46 and 63 and then produced a cultured 71 to go ahead.
The Welshman levelled the math with 42 in the fourth.
The fifth frame provided the pivotal moment that swung all the momentum in Day's favour.
Having opened with 42 he let Hendry back in with a good chance and the Scot had cruised along to 39 when he, totally inexplicably, missed the easiest green off its spot. Day mopped up to pinch the frame.
The only possible explanation for Hendry's miss was that the green was a very similar shot to the green he missed in the Masters and maybe his mind or eye wandered from the shot in hand.
However Hendry countered Day's run of 41 in the next with a 75 clearance to level the match.
Day looked far more comfortable throughout tonight's match than he had in his edgy win over Drago yesterday and he produced his best run of the match, 52 to move 4-3 ahead.
We could have been heading for another dedicing frame shoot out. Hendry pieced together a run of 69 in the eighth frame, before running for cover. Day needed two snookers.
And he got them! And then held his nerve to clear the last red to the black for victory.
"I far more relaxed tonight", said Day. "There wasn't the pressure on me like yesterday."
Earlier in the day Mark Williams, John Higgins, Mark Selby and Graeme Dott completed victories to book their places in the Last 16 line up.
Williams scrapped out the first four frames with Fergal O'Brien before both players broke loose after the interval with three back to back centuries. One by O'Brien and two by Williams.
The Welsh added a run of 37 in the seventh frame to nullify O'Brien's opening 49, when the Irishman went in off and secured victory on the blue.
John Higgins dominated his 5-2 win over another Irishman, Michael Judge. He stormed into a 3-0 lead with breaks of 87, 105 and 65, before adding a more fragment fourth frame.
Judge came back strongly after the interval with runs of 68 and 73 to close to 4-2 but Higgins clicked up another gear again, compiling 109 to close out the match.
Graeme Dott won a high scoring match against Joe Perry 5-3.
Perry fired in 129 to open proceeding and then pinched the second with pink and black.
Dott's took the third with a brace of thirties and stroked in 71 to take the fourth after Perry broke down on 30.
The next two frames were shared as Perry made a 90 and Dott made 55, which started him on a run of three frames to the winning line.
The diminutive Scot smacked in 83 to go 4-3 ahead and made 40 in a low scoring eighth frame to secure victory.
A bright and breezy match between the new Pokerstar.com Masters Champion Mark Selby and Judd Trump ended in a 5-2 win for the Leicester Master
It really came down to more unforced errors, mainly on safety shots by Trump, which gave Selby the chance to knock in breaks of 30, 31, 51, 45, 71, 115 and 58.
Ding Junhui was the second seed of the day to fall at the first hurdle. A very solid performance from Jamie Cope saw the Chinese star beaten 5-3, much to the disappointment of the massed Chinese Media.
Ding won the opener and the third frame with a best effort of 40. Cope fired in 123, 40 and 64 to open a 3-2 lead
A brilliant run of 134, the highest of the week so far, brought Ding level again. But he barely got a look in after that as the 'Shotgun' rattled in 73 and 71 to close out the match.
