Welsh Open 2011 (the qualifying rounds) - the last day

A pretty smile for the camera- Jack Lisowski

With many, many apologies for delaying this, here’s my article, article dedicated to the last day of the qualifying rounds for one of the most brilliant snooker tournaments there is - the Welsh Open.
As you probably already know, the last day of any competition is a true battle of strong nerves and many, many rewards, not just the ones that come with the qualification. For some of the players this also meant a place in the World Championship, due to start in April, because after the Welsh Open is through a new revision of the ranking system will be performed and, as always, the Top 16 players will get a free ticket to the next tournaments. But first of all let’s focus on what happened yesterday and who got a spot in the Welsh Open, ok?


Believe it or not, Dave Harold "graduated" top of his class :-)) Well, maybe not top of his class, but to end your last dispute on a whitewash and, more importantly, when that last dispute is against the terrific player Liang Wenbo, then you are a true professional. So, yep, we are going to see Harold play in Newport next week, his first match being against Ricky Walden. It would definitely be nice to see the guy play again in a televised ranking tournament, for the last time I saw him was at the Shanghai Masters and that was looooooong, looong time ago.

Focusing on Welsh Open, are you mate?

Martin Gould and Jack Lisowski ended their match on a very thigh result, a 4-3 in favor of Jack who hit a marvelous 62 to close his opponent run, as well as a break of just 20 points put an end to Dominic Dale v. Mark Davis match, a very tiring match closed at 4-2 in favor of Dominic’s.


Nigel Bond defeated the Irish Ken Doherty 4-2, while Tony Drago was going to be eliminated by the same score by Joe Perry and Michael Holt hammered Andrew Higginson 4-1 for a place in the main tournament, a place that will be "shared" with his new opponent - Mark King
But not everyone had a good day, as Andy Hicks (after a beautiful run) was whitewashed 4-0 by Barry Hawkins, Paul Davison lost in the same way to Stuart Bingham and Joe Swail was defeated 4-1 by Marco Fu.


So, drawing the line, the 14 players though to the next round - round that means Newport Wales - Welsh Open (due to start on Monday) are:

Martin Gould 3 - 4 Jack Lisowski
Liang Wenbo 0 - 4 Dave Harold
Barry Hawkins 4 - 0 Andy Hicks
Mark Davis 2 - 4 Dominic Dale
Judd Trump 1 - 4 Rod Lawler
Marcus Campbell 4 - 0 Joe Jogia
Marco Fu 4 - 1 Joe Swail
Stephen Lee 1 - 4 Rory McLeod
Joe Perry 4 - 2 Tony Drago
Gerard Greene 4 - 0 Ian McCulloch
Stuart Bingham 4 - 0 Paul Davison
Andrew Higginson 1 - 4 Michael Holt
Tom Ford 0 - 4 Jamie Burnett
Ken Doherty 2 - 4 Nigel Bond


I remind you that there are still two more matches to be played, because the qualifiers offer 16 places for grabs, the matches between Ryan Day and Jimmy White and Matthew Stevens and Anthony Hamilton taking place directly at the venue of the main tournament.


All these being said, I congratulate all those who made it though but also those who weren’t lucky enough and I expect to meet you again really soon, because the coming week is a snooker week bottom to top! ;-)