World Championship 2012 (Day 16) - O'Sullivan leads Carter after first day

Rocket Ronnie, just eight frames away from victory

Day one of the World Championship final is over and at the end of it Ronnie O'Sullivan took a 10-7 lead over Ali Carter.

The Essex-final started with the 'Rocket' flying at 2-0, but the 'Captain' caught up with him really soon, as the mid-session interval was kicking off, Carter using breaks of 84 and 33 to draw level.

Still, by the end of the first session O'Sullivan was sure to take a considerable lead of 5-3 after hitting in runs of 52, 92 and 141.

A few hours after the lads re-entered into the arena, Carter tried to restore the balance of the match and started by taking the first frame with a break of 56. But his opponent had other plans and after a pretty scrappy affair and just a top break of 49 points, O'Sullivan was reinstalling the two-frame advantage, while a strategically 68 was putting him 7-4 ahead.

The 'Captain' was able to pull back a frame in time to avoid O'Sullivan extending his lead, but what followed next frustrated the man whose last ranking title is the 2010 Shanghai Masters, Ronnie capturing two consecutive frames with runs of 36 and 29 for a 9-6 lead.

Captain Carter hasn't really taken off yet

59 points seemed to be enough to maintain Carter's hopes of making a comeback alive as he cashed the 15^th frame, but when O'Sullivan won the next on, his dreams were shattered one more time.

Still, after a very intense last frame, Carter succeeded to restore the three-frame gap and closed the session by trailing 10-7.

The match resumes tomorrow, at the end of the day the name of this year's World Championship winner being no longer a mystery.

2.30pm
Ali Carter 7-10 Ronnie O'Sullivan (eight frames)
7.30pm
Ali Carter v Ronnie O'Sullivan* (10 frames)
*denotes the last session of the match

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