The Masters - Williams extinguises Maguire

Williams, the second name to reach the QFs

The first day of this year's Masters tournament came to an end after the second match saw Mark Williams beating Stephen Maguire 6-4 for a place in the next round.

Although it wasn't a spectacular match, none of the players being at their best, it did featured some pretty interesting tactical safety battles.

The match between Williams and Maguire made its debut with the Welshman flying all over to being 4-0 up as the interval kicked off. Williams used breaks like 57, 72, 64 and 53 to finish the first session in the leading position. 
On the other hand, Maguire was all over the place, missing crucial shots and not taking advantage when his opponent made mistakes.

After the 15-minutes break the Scotsman seemed a bit revived runs of 40 and 29 bringing him two frames on a row, but the seventh frame was going Williams' way, the scoreline being now 5-2. One more frame needed for the Welshman to win this snooker encounter.

Maguire's fire was easily extinguised by Williams

However, victory needed to wait a bit, for Maguire won a crucial 8^th frame and the next one as well, with a top break of 77. So from being lead 5-2, he was now just one point behind.
Unfortunately for the Scotsman he didn't manage to complete the comeback, a break of 51 from Williams sealing his victory at 6-4.

All things aside and although Maguire wasn't quite "on-fire" as his nickname says it, it was nice to see the Scotsman not loosing his grip when he missed important shots.

So, the first day ends with two names going through the quarter-finals, Ronnie O'Sullivan (see the story here) and Mark Williams.

But let's see what Day 2 offers us, shall we?

12:30

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*all hours are UK time

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