Player Tour Championship Event 2 2011 - Day2

Liam Highfield and Adam Duffy

The second day of the Players Tour Championship Event Two was as long as the day before it, the lads taking their time to win, or lose their cue battles, carefully and strategically placed in the lovely South West Snooker Academy from Gloucester.


It's been one of those days when you look at yourself and say: "Thank God that youngsters have something for this sport!". And names like Liam Highfield or Adam Duffy have definitely popped up in this process. Both of them have had a tremendous run until now, Highfield managing to beat Jamie Jones and Adrian Gunnell 4-1,only to meet another teenager player in his final confrontation, Sam Baird, whom he also beat 4-2. As for Adam Duffy, the man was in the mood for winning, clearly, as he ended on a tight 4-3 with Mark Joyce, beat Gary Wilson 4-2, but saved the best for last whitewashing the one and only Mark Selby, 4-0. Now, that's snooker!

Can Ronnie win another PTC?

Not as fortunate as his predecessors, Anthony McGill only reached the third round, after beating Adam Wicheard 4-0 and hammering Andrew Higginson 4-1 having to face a very tough opponent, Neil Robertson. And since Robbo needs to regain his fame and glory (the last season wasn't a very good one for him), he determinately won 4-0. However, it is a very good start for Scotland's McGill and hopefully we shall see more of him in the next tournaments.

Master Hendry returns to Scotland

Moving on to the heavy names, Ronnie O'Sullivan succeeded to qualify for the Last 16, after putting up quite a show on Twitter about how he hates bow ties and the dress code that snooker tournaments impose. Still, when he entered the arena, he seemed pretty focused and although he wasn't rocking around the snooker table all the time, he did win 4-1 over Nick Jennings and Stephen Hendry and finished his day with a tight 4-3 against Matthew Stevens. That last match, although not the most entertaining one, was typical clash of styles for sure.

His Rustyness - John Higgins

The current world champion, John Higgins is still a bit rusty (now, really? come one, snap out of it man!) and even though he defeated his first two opponents, Matthew Couch and Stephen Maguire 4-2, he got beaten by Ali Carter 4-1 (no wonder, as he didn't play too bright during that last match).
And since we are on the "Ali Carter" chapter, I must tell you that the Captain flew pretty nicely yesterday, winning 4-2 over David Grace (beautiful 134 break) and Alfie Burden, before setting his last victory against Higgins.


Tony Drago and Fergal O'Brien kept us awake late in the night and all odds indicated that Drago was going to win this especially since he was leading 3-0, but O'Brien put up quite a comeback and won in the end by 4-3. At the same time, Yu Delu and Patrick Wallace did almost the same thing, with the only difference that Delu was leading 2-0 before his opponent started coming back for more. Still, in the end, the victory was cashed by the Chinese with 4-3.

The Captain is flying

A very good match was also the one between Mark Davis and Judd Trump, the more experienced Davis putting Trump in trouble more than once. He was always the one that took the lead, but sadly Jamie didn't let him do it anymore from 2-1 up. This year’s World Championship runner-up used a break of 72 to draw level and from that moment on, the table and the balls blindly obeyed him, as he won by 4-2.


Below you can check the complete list of results:


9am


Not before 11am


Not before 1pm


Not before 3pm


Not before 5pm


Not before 7pm


Not before 9pm


Today's matches:


Last16 (from 10am UK time)


The quarter-finals will start from 1pm, the semis from 4pm and the final from 7pm.