World Championship 2011 - Day 5 - Gould fights back to beat Fu

Gouldie makes it into the Last 16

Yesterday started with top class snooker, thrilling battles, pressure and tension spread all over that beautiful arena that the Crucible has. Martin "Gouldie" Gould put quite a show proving he can play under pressure and can handle tricky situations in order to defeat Marco Fu 10-8, after being lead 6-3 at the end of the first session.

On the next table the slowest match ever was given between Ricky Walden and Rory McLeod, the last one winning it 10-6.


If yesterday Martin Gould didn’t seem to have a very good first session, looking pretty tense and missing a lot of balls, today was a whole different story. Right from the beginning of it, Martin launched himself in a genuine battle of strong ambition and snooker skills in order to cash five consecutive frames! Can you even imagine that? Well, if you watched the match sure you can, but how great is that?

Marco Fu`s form wasn`t a winner today

Breaks of 66, 43, 37 and 61 can be made responsible for this terrific comeback, but we also must acknowledge that Marco Fu`s form of playing the game wasn’t the best. It’s true that the guy was waken up in the middle of the night by a fire alarm and that’s really a shame, as he needed the rest for today, but still he didn’t manage to overcome Gould’s grandness. However he is a strong player and even if he was now 8-6 down, he succeeded in leveling the match with a wonderful series of 60 and 100.


At 8-8 the match could have gone either way, but Gould’s 59 put him in front of the battle 9-8, while the fact that he won the next frame made him the champion of this thrilling match. 10-8 and Gould is through to the Last 16 round!


At the near table Walden v. McLeod match, match that had its first session shortened (on 4-4) due to it taking toooooooo bloody long was starting according to plan. Meaning that the boys weren’t separated by more than one frame, as they did the day before that.

Rory McLeod and his "real man" beard

Still from 5-5, things got a bit more complicated for Walden as his opponent used top breaks of 62 and 65 to go 9-5 up! It was a genuine battle of nerves, believe me and I really admire those two for holding on there!


When everything looked lost for Walden, he managed to pull back a frame as to minimize the gap at 9-6, but the next frame was won by McLeod (not in a easy way though, it lasted forever) to set the final scoreline at 10-6. Great effort from both players to maintain their heard clear and keep on fighting for a place in the Last 16.