German Masters 2011 - Day 3 (part I)

20:50:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

Mark Williams seems to be back in business
The third day of the German Masters competition has started pretty well, seeing all the top seeds winning their matches, but unfortunately John Higgins had to withdraw from the tournament. He found out that his father’s heath condition had become worse, so he rushed back to Scotland as to be close to his supportive dad. Unfortunately his beloved father has passed away, losing the battle against the most horrible disease there is out there and that’s steeling more and more people from us - cancer. My deepest sympathies and condolences go to John and his family in these hard times :-(


John made a remarkable start against his opponent, Robert Milkins, winning the first three frames with breaks of 93 and a beautiful 143 clearance, only to see Milkins pulling back one frame at a time and drawing at 3-3. Still, the Scot was determined to win this match, so he kept on potting those crazy snooker balls, until he ended the "affair" on a 5-3 final score. He was supposed to play against Marco Fu in tonight’s session, but due to his withdrawal, Marco gets a free ticket to the quarter-finals.


Selby has won his place in the quarter-finals
A very interesting battle was the one between the Welsh Mark Williams and the Scot Anthony McGill, because Mark seems to be back in business as he hammered Anthony 5-1 to book himself a place into the evening session, where he’ll meet Dominic Dale. The same score was also cashed by Marco Fu, who defeated Mark King and is now comfortable settled in, in the quarter-finals round.
Daniel Wells, who was if I’m not wrong the only wildcard left in the tournament, lost 2-5 to the Scot Stephen Maguire, who’ll meet Ricky Walden later on today.


Mark Selby and Stephen Hendry put quite a show today, confusing the audience who’s going to win the snooker battle in the end. Why am I saying that? Well, mainly because Mark wasn’t playing at his best and because Hendry has improved his game a bit more and put Selby in trouble for a few times. ;-) "The Jester from Leicester" broke the ice clearing the table in the first two frames, with breaks of 76 and 105, only to see a 71 break hit by Hendry who was now just one frame away from his opponent. The 4th frame started with a safety shots battle, battle that was won in the end by Selby, who’s 83 break made the score look something like this: 3-1. The boy from Leicester was going into the midd-session interval with a very good advantage ;-)


A winner`s smile - Joe Swail
But was happened next was pure madness! :-)) Hendry scored a beautiful 72 in the 5th frame and hit in runs of 60 and 26 in the next one as to equalise the result at 3-3! At that moment the match could have gone either way and God knows that Hendry had plenty of opportunities to win this, but unfortunately he missed them.

The 7th frame made its debut with strange mistakes made by both of the players, Selby potting the wrong ball and Hendry potting the cue ball, but Mark seemed to be back in the game as he was getting in the balls when he suddenly missed the black of its spot! Strange thing, but he’s only human, you know?! Hendry had the chance to get back in the match but his 40 break didn’t overcome the 54 one hit by Selby. As the score was reaching 75-52 in favor of the Englishman, Hendry was in need of a snooker that he didn’t quite get, in the end Selby closing the deal at 4-3.
The next frame, was also the last one, Hendry committing another fatal error (hitting the blue ball of its spot after he broke into the reds), this giving Selby a clean chance to hit a break of 61 and win the match with a 5-3 final result. It was, without any doubt, a thrilling match and both players had plenty of opportunities as to crowned themselves as winners, in the end Selby being the one to do the job.


Wonderful performance by Joe Swail, the boy from Northern Ireland beating Shaun Murphy 5-3, as he played a beautiful double on the pink to close the match in his favor.
The last two matches ended up on a 5-2 scoreline, Ding Junhui defeating Peter Ebdon after a very long match and a very hard battle of who’s going to take the lead one and for all and Graeme Dott moving pass Hamilton to reach the quarter finals.


Tonight matches are:
19:00 - 22:00 (UK time) - British EuroSport
Ricky Walden v. Stephen Maguire
Mark Williams v. Dominic Dale
Joe Perry v. Ali Carter
Marco Fu v. John Higgins (Fu is through to the next round)


Enjoy snooker and see you tomorrow for the latest comments on the third day of the German Masters tournament :-)

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