BBC SPORT | Other sport… | Snooker | Hendry hits back to stun Williams
Let’s hope Stephen Hendy has found is his game again.
Quite an exciting match last night between Mark Selby and Ryan Day in the Royal London Watches Grand Prix. Trailing two frames behind Selby managed to catch up only to miss a crucial match-winning red in the last frame leaving it open for Ryan Day to win the match.
Ronnie O’Sullivan has won his first two matches even though he has admitted to playing bad at best and usually playing just poor. So that’s promising for the rest of the tournament!
Ronnie O’Sullivan easily defeated Dave Harold in the final yesterday evening. It wasn’t much of an exciting match to watch, but the semi-final between Ronnie and Ali Carter was the total opposite.
Ronnie was trailing for most of the match and it wasn’t until the final red in the last frame it was decided who was going to go on to the final. They both played fast attack snooker with the average frame time around 10-11 minutes, which means it was fast-paced action from the start to the finish!
Not that surprising Ronnie won quite easily over Ali Carter in the final.
Ali looked tired and worn out from his hard semi-final against Joe Perry and failed to make use of O’Sullivan’s mistakes. Ronnie on the other hand wasn’t too happy with this game in the final, which wasn’t up to the same standard as when he easily beat Stephen Hendry in the semi-final.
After the match Ronnie again said that he might take a break from snooker. He always says that after the season but so far he’s always been back in the autumn, so we’ll see.
Liang Wenbo became the first Chinese player to reach the quarter-finals at The Crucible as he won 13-12 in an enthralling match over Joe Swail.
BBC Sport: Liang edges out Swail in classic
It was magic to watch and the final frame was nerve-wrecking. Go see it at the BBC link above!
Now Liang Wenbo will face Ronnie O’Sullivan in an interesting quarter final. Liang’s over-the-top aggressive style reminds me of a young O’Sullivan, who by now is more selectively aggressive and has a brilliant defensive game.
Ronnie O’Sullivan is playing against Mark Williams in the second round right now. If you don’t have eurosport you can follow the exciting match on eurosport or on the bbc website.
It’s brilliant snooker, so don’t miss it!
Brilliant snooker yesterday in the first round between Ding Junhui and Marco Fu. The best match so far this world championship with Ding Junhui in the end winning with 10-9 but it could have gone either way.
I hope you didn’t miss it!
The 2008 World Snooker Championship has begun! On Saturday the first matches started and when we weren’t out and about during the weekend the TV was tuned in to Eurosport. If you don’t get eurosport on your TV you can watch the web feeds from the eurosport site.
I expect we will watch quite a bit of snooker the coming few weeks. But after the World Championship there won’t be another ranking event until in August…
BBC Sport also covers the snooker.
It was quite an amazing final between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Selby last night. Ronnie was leading 8-5, only needing one more frame to win his 20th ranking victory. Mark Selby, however, fought back, winning three in a row and suddenly it was 8-8 and a deciding frame. Which he won after Ronnie made a few mistakes too many.
Last night Mark Selby easily won the final in the Masters with 10-3 over Stephen Lee. While that might not have been that tough, Selby won his previous three matches 6-5 to reach the final.
To first go though that and then cruise the final like he did is quite impressive.
The unpredictable Ronnie O’Sullivan will probably keep his loyal fans but a charismatic player like Mark Selby showing consistent results will for sure charm the crowds.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to watch Ronnie play snooker but you just never know what you get. Sometimes he will be brilliant, at other times though he just totally stink. On the other hand watching Selby you know you are going to get good snooker.