World Championship Day 3



Jamie Jones completed another Crucible first round upset
by beating world number 4, Shaun Murphy, 10-8
(Picture World Snooker)

There was yet another upset at the Crucible on Monday as Welshman Jamie Jones defeated world number 4, Shaun Murphy, by 10 frames to 8. Jones, who played excellent in his fourth qualifying round match against Ricky Walden to get to the main event, trailed 5-4 after the first session and was 6-7 down at the interval, but won the next three to go 9-7 up. The nerves seemed to be jangling from the Neath player as he let slip when he was in the balls in the 17^th frame to allow Murphy to close the gap to one, but he managed to keep his cool to win the next frame and frame ball was accompanied by an almighty roar as he progressed through to the last 16.

It appeared that only the second crucible whitewash was going to occur as Matthew Stevens won all eight of the opening frames in his match against Marco Fu but the Hong Kong player managed to win the last frame of the morning session to ensure that would not happen. The pair returned for the evening session with the match all but settled however Fu did take two frames to restore some respectability to the score line but Stevens progressed to the next round, with a comfortable 10-3 win.

Stephen Maguire finished off his match with young Luca Brecel, running out a 10-5 winner in the morning session. Neither player were particularly strong in the opening two frames with the two sharing the opening four frames but it seemed that Maguire’s frustration might cause one or two problems for the Scot, with on one occasion, petulantly smashing the ball after being place in a snooker. However, Maguire settled into a rhythm and was able to win the two frames following the interval to progress to round 2.

Ronnie O’Sullivan and recent winner of the China Open, Peter Ebdon, began their mouth-watering tie in the afternoon although The Rocket got himself into a comfortable 7-2 lead before their second session, tomorrow. The other match of the day saw the first session of a recent in-form Stephen Lee face Andrew Higginson. The match started off on close terms with both players winning three of the first six frames. However, Widnes’ Higginson opened up a two frame gap to go 5-3 ahead but Lee ensured that he would only be one behind in tomorrow’s concluding session by winning the final frame.