Snooker's Top Marks in China
Mark King, Mark Allen and Marco Fu are already into the last eight of the China Open with namesakes Selby and Williams poised to join them later today.
King was first through after ending the run of wildcard, Tian Pengfei bt five-frames-to-three.
Pengfei showed signs of a reaction to his defeat of world number one, Ronnie O’Sullivan. He lost the opening two frames inside 30-minutes, before finally finding his touch making breaks of 46 and 51 to level at the interval.
King never lost his lead though and breaks of 42 and 91 gave him a 3-2 and 4-3 lead.
An early run of 43 in the eighth frame set the World number 16 up for victory which he took on the colours.
Mark Allen followed King into the quarter-final moments later after wrapping up a hard fought win by the same score line against world number two, Stephen Maguire.
Despite losing the first frame, the Northern Irishman made breaks of 63 twice and 44 to open lead 4-1.
The Scot produced a bit of a fightback with a pair of 64s himself, but it was a case of too little too late. Allen made a decisive 60 break in the next to set up a match with the winner of tonight’s match between Ryan Day and Stephen Hendry.
Allister Carter put behind him a poor record in Chinese ranking events and finished strongly in his match with Joe Perry. Level at three frames apiece, last year’s Welsh Open Champion made breaks of 79 and 70 to claim a place in the last eight.
Carter will now play King for a place in Saturday’s semi-finals.
Marco Fu made a brilliant recovery to edge out veteran Nigel Bond also by five-frames-to-three.
Bond, who beat the world number three Shaun Murphy in the last 32, went ahead by three-frames-to-nil, before Fu made a 71 break before the interval to stop the rot.
Hong Kong’s Fu has not had the best of seasons, but showed signs at last week’s Championship League of a return to form.
The next four frames were anything but vintage Fu, who is one of the heaviest scorers in the game, but a succession of mid-size breaks were enough to see him through.
Fu will now take on the winner of the tie-of-the-round between John Higgins and Mark Williams.
