2015 World Seniors Championship (Day 1) - Masters at work

The Circus Arena from Blackpool

As I said in a previous blog post the month of March is a busy, busy one and just as one tournament ends, another one kicks off. 

This is also the case for the 2015 World Seniors Championship which started yesterday in the mighty Circus Arena from Blackpool.

Although the playing standard is a bit lower than what we saw a few days ago during the Gdynia Open, the tournament still has a few aces to stun its audience. And yesterday those were: John Parrott, Fergal O'Brien and Mark Williams.

The opening match started, of course, with the defending champion Steve Davis who took on a pretty difficult opponent, Rory McLeod.

Steve Davis is freezing

The match was scrappy and Steve complained about being too cold in the arena, but he did manage to overcome the "Rory test" with top breaks of 28, 24 and 30 plus a marvellous doubled green in the decider, for a 2-1 final scoreline.

Next in line were John Parrott and Cliff Thorburn. What a snooker display this was! John was very excited to be in the tournament and it seems that all those trips with the Snooker Legends tour have paid off, as the Englishman hit in runs of 48 and 53 to perform the first whitewash of the tournament, 2-0.

Darren Morgan in action

Joe Johnson left the commentator chair and picked up his cue to face Paul McPhillips, but although he had a pretty strong start and hit a half a century break in the process, he lost the following two frames to his opponent who advanced in the quarter-finals.

The first session of the day was closed by Dennis Taylor and Darren Morgan, Darren using runs of 45, 33 and 25 to win 2-0. No surprise there really, as the Welsh player is still in the game (even if he retired from professional snooker) and he also won this event back in 2011.

This was Jimmy's 500th professional tournament

An hours later SkySports re-started its snooker broadcast as Nigel Bond and Dominic Dale took the stage. Of the two, Dom was the dominant one, breaks of 34 and 21 helping him get a place in the next round.

Although he kindly refused to use "Dominique Magnifique" as a new nickname (me and another Twitter friend made the proposition) he did say he might consider Demonic Dominic instead. Sounds good to me!

Another important page was to be written in the grand snooker history book, as Jimmy White entered the arena to take on Ireland's Ken Doherty.

O'Brien is over the moon with his performance

This was Jimmy's 500^th professional tournament, but unfortunately he didn't seal the moment with a victory, Ken-Do winning a dramatic opening frame on the black and the second one on the pink.

The first day of the World Seniors Championship was rapidly coming to an end, but it saved the best for last.

Fergal O'Brien beat Peter Ebdon in an exceptional display of snooker which consisted in back-to-back century breaks (105 and 110), while Mark Williams (the “baby” of the competition, as Steve Davis described him) made a total clearance of 140 points to beat Darryn Walker 2-0.

Today will see the conclusion of the tournament, which basically means that by tonight we shall have a champion. Yipeeeee!!!

For the moment though, here is the order of play for the quarter-finals stages:

1pm John Parrott v. Paul McPhillips
2pm Ken Doherty v. Darren Morgan
3pm Steve Davis v. Fergal O'Brien
4pm Mark Williams v. Dominic Dale

*all hours are UK time