by elliott west
Snooker can be sublime especially when a tournament begins to warm up. The Northern Ireland Open is one of those Christmas presents that you get to open before Christmas Day. With so many matches to choose from it must be quite frustrating when your preferred match is not televised and you have to hunt for the result.
As fans gathered for the morning session there was an a hint of revenge in the air as Barry Hawkins drew Michael Holt. Holt had of course beaten Barry in the recent World Open in Yushan, China. Holt is a player who I deeply respect and am amazed with his obvious talent that he hasn’t won multiple titles in his career, but as you know snooker can favour some and hinder others. Holt sadly has been at the receiving end of the defeat headache and his match with Barry turned out to move in Hawkins’ favour. Barry similarly hasn’t performed that well this season but as the year draws to a close this was a chance to start finding his game and winning matches. The match went to a knife edge with both players sharing the frames and in the end it went to a decider. Hawkins got the better of Holt on this occasion but had it been another day, Michael could have won this match. Frustrating because although I deeply respect both players, I am desperate to see Holt do well.
The seeded players seem to be holding out at this tournament, unlike in China where scalps were taken in the early rounds. The cream of the crop, Ronnie O’Sullivan came across a young player called Lei Peifan. Lei won the first frame and looked like he was in for a promising start but he was only able to win another frame in the match. A relentless Ronnie was unleashed in this match with breaks of 101, 95, 84 and 54, this was a high scoring match and highly entertaining. Averaging less than fourteen seconds a shot, Ronnie made the game look easy as ball after ball were sunk. It seems that O’Sullivan is in a good place in this competition unlike his patchy form recently. With Ronnie having the desire to win, other potential winners can’t lay on their laurels for too long or they will be dispatched out the door.
Defending champion Judd Trump carried on his good run putting aside his defeat at the Champion of Champions to concentrate on retaining this title. Breaks of 125, 90, 76 and 64 sealed his win against Zhang Anda and put him in good stead to reach the looming final. This 4-1 win shows how dangerous Trump can be and when the breeze is blowing in his direction it soon becomes a gale force wind!
Mark Selby continued his trail for unlikely one million pound prize for capturing all the titles in this Open series. Playing one of the original “Class of ‘92” Matthew Stevens this looked like it could be a close match but whatever reason Stevens has gone off the boil in recent years. He managed to win the opening frame but then was outplayed by Selby who reeled off four frames in a row to win the match.
The same can be said for Mark Allen who desperately wants to win his home event against Jamie O’Neill. Jamie was no match for Allen and his opponent got thumped 4-0. Allen now marches forward to the third round for the first time since 2016.
Wins also came for Stuart Bingham who after scoring a 147 break in the opening frame of his last match didn’t perform as well against Jordan Brown, scoring less heavily but with enough reserve to beat the local player 4-1.
The winning streak continued with John Higgins taking out Kacper Filipiak, 4-1 and his World Cup partner Stephen Maguire re-stoked his fire after a recent leg injury to beat the Sussex player Mark Davis, 4-2. There were also great wins for Ken Doherty who whitewashed Soheil Vahedi, 4-0, Ricky Walden, Ali Carter, Luca Brecel and Joe Perry. Yan Bingtao caused an early exit for Marco Fu, beating him, 4-1.
