China Open 2011 - Day 2 (part I)

13:36:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

Mark Davis starts his run full of confidence
The second day of this year’s The Bank of Beijng China Open tournament has started with the two my wildcards being eliminated, Rouzi Maimaiti losing to Robert Milkins and Yu Delu to Gerard Greene, while the defending champion Mark Williams saw his chance to keep his title gone with the wind after Stephen Lee ended their encounter on a very tight result of 5-4.


Robert Milkins and Rozi Maimaiti were the first two players to finish their match, the Englishman hammering the little Chinese 5-1. Robert broke the ice with a break of 52, but Rozi was careful enough as to hit in runs of 43 and 61 and take the following frame bringing the score at 1-1. Still, that was going to be the first and last frame Maimaiti was going to win, as Milkins took care of cashing all the remaining ones with breaks of 32, 42, 72 and 52. The magic number was two, as you may have noticed :-))


The mighty Stephen Lee defeats the current champion
One of the two matches that were televised was the one between Mark Davis and Stephen Maguire, a match with a very interesting result. After losing his chance to participate in this year World Championship, Davis seemed pretty determined to end his season the right way, so he fought like a lion to win over Maguire. And he managed to succeed.
Mark took the opening frame with a break of 64, but a 75 was giving Stephen the next one. One more time, the Englishman took the lead, this time by winning two frames on a row, but again the Scotsman managed to level up at 3-3, by hitting a marvelous 97. The game was one, but the one who dominated the rest of it was, without doubt, Davis, as he hit a 73 to make the score go 4-3 in his favor and he cleared the table with a stunning 137 to assure his victory. Top class!


Yu Delu and Gerard Greene ended their match on a 5-2 scoreline, after the Englishman took the first three frames with breaks of 38, 24 and 39, the Chinese player responded with a 52 and a marvelous 117 to start his comeback, but Gerard took the next two frames with runs of 37, 53 and 60 as to secure a place into the next round.


Mark Williams is not very happy
The last match to end was the second one that EuroSport decided to cover as it has had the defending champion trying to take care of his title from the mighty Stephen Lee.
Although the battle started more than good for the Welshman, as he hit two century breaks to take over the first two frames (100 and 113), it continued by losing some of its rhythm after that; also Lee leveled at 2-2, by hitting in breaks of 86 and 46 and even took the lead for the first time since the beginning of the match.
What happened next was a "bit of history repeated" because Williams hit another two beautiful century breaks (104 and 137), after that Lee forcing the match into a decider and winning it. It’s true that the Welshman has a pretty good chance as to win that last frame, but he lost position while he was reaching 53 points, Lee coming to the table and clearing it for a 61 break and the victory.


It was a very entertaining match, maybe the best one since the 2011 China Open started and it proved something that many of us refuse to believe sometimes, that snooker is more than just about century breaks. It’s a real shame to see Williams lose, but we all know that Lee is a very tough opponent.


Four matches to follow today:


From 12:30(UK time)
Ding Junhui v. Kurt Maflin
Shaun Murphy v. Joe Perry
Graeme Dott v. Li HangDoherty
Mark Allen v. Marcus Campbell


TV coverage:
12:00 - 12:30 British EuroSport
12:30 - 15:45 British EuroSport (live)
20:15 - 22:15 Britisdh EuroSport 2


See you tonight for some comments and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, for the score updates. :-)

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