Shanghai Masters qualifiers 2011 - the last day

The king ... Mark King

The last day of the Shanghai Masters qualifiers ended so this means that we now have the whole package of players ready to be shipped to China in September. It was a hard snooker marathon and with only 16 places up for grabs the competitive level was very high. Not everyone managed to cope with the enormous pressure, but those who did can take at least two days of celebration, before we hit the road again, this time for the second PTC event that will be held in Gloucester at the South West Snooker Academy.


Convalescence time seems to be over for the restless Mark King, who obtained a very important and meaningful victory against Liu Song, whom he beat 5-4 to grab a place for the plane that will fly him to Shanghai, but unfortunately not the same can be told about Ricky Walden, whose winning days seem so far away now, the 2008 Shanghai Masters champion losing 1-5 in front of the Irishman Fergal O'Brien.

Faultless performance from Jack Lisowski

Thailand will be proudly represented in China after James Wattana hammered Joe Perry 5-1, Dominic Dale ended Scotland's Jamie Burnett dream of qualification with a 5-3 scoreline, while Ken Doherty and Anthony Hamilton had a pretty long and tiring battle of cues, that finished with the victory of "The Sheriff of Pottingham" 5-3.
One of the best performance that has been recorded during these qualifiers, was the Jack Lisowski's one. The lad concluded his first two matches with a perfect 5-0 result, only to see him applying a cruel 5-1 in his final battle against Marco Fu. After such a great run, Jack's back in business, there's no doubt!


As expected, the "pink boys" Gerard Greene and Robert Milkins ended their match with a decider, the one who won it being Robert, while Andrew Higginson and Barry Pinches thought it will be for the best to copy the same pattern and so they consumed all their munitions, Andrew surviving with 5-4.

Mark Davis is ready for the kill

Some really great victories were cashed by Nigel Bond who crashed Marcus Campbell 5-0, by Stephen Lee who hammered Thai Passakorn Suwannawat 5-1 and by Martin Gould, who won 5-2 over "The champions' crasher" Matt Selt. However, not the same can be said about Kurt Maflin, Norway's ambassador sadly losing 5-2 in front of Liang Wenbo after such a wonderful run, but also about poor Barry Hawkins, who had the victory in his hands by leading Michael Holt 4-2, only to lose 4-5 after Holty performed a great comeback into the match.


A bit of history repeated between Stuart Bingham and Tom Ford, the Australian Goldfields Open champion defeating Tom 5-1 (during the Australian tournament Stuart crashed him 5-0) by hitting a rain of breaks of 102, 107 and 111, while Mark Davis has proved once more he is ready for the kill this season and managed to keep his focus as to win the decider against Adrian Gunnell.


So, lads and lasses these have been the Shanghai Masters qualifiers, a genuine test of endurance sprinkled with a bit of luck or misfortune from time to time ;-)
Below you can check the last day's list of results:


10am


2.30pm


7pm