2015 Australian Open - the first 2 days of cue action
This Monday saw the kick off of the much-beloved Australian Open (the
snooker-related one! seriously it says snooker on this blog, what did you
expect?! Tennis?). So, we are DownUnder in Bendigo and the first two days of
cue action can be easily described as full of surprises and shocks!First stop is of course Stuart Bingham, our current world champion (and 2011 Australian Open trophy holder) who experienced a 5-4 defeat in front of Irishman Fergal O'Brien.
Despite the fact that Bingham held a pretty comfortable lead of 4-2,
O'Brien made his way through the woods of comeback and fired in breaks of 128,
66 and 88 to win the following three frames and set a snooker-meeting with
another world champion, John Higgins (who saw off Michael Georgious by 5-2).
Neil Robertson is also
amongst those who were given a taste of "early exit", Matthew Selt
putting on quite a tremendous show when pressure was the name of the game.
Selt started rocking around the snooker table early in the match, a top break
of 83 putting him 2-0 up, while a scrappy third frame and a break of 63 were
pushing him one step closer to the victory line, at 4-0.
Now, it's true that the local-hero Neil Robertson hasn't had a good history
with this particular tournament, but he did put in quite a fight for the
comeback.
And so a break of 55 was winning him the first frame, to which he added
three more (last one dramatically clinched on the black) to force the
decider.
Here everything went down to the blue (for Selt) and the rest of the
colours for Robertson, in the end the Englishman potting blue and pink to
advance in the competition and leave his opponent into humming Johnny Logan's
"What's another year" song.
Still, there are some really good news for the defending champion of this
tournament, Judd Trump who recorded a clear victory of 5-0 in front of his
friend Jack Lisowski (breaks of 114, 50, 102 and 69 being hit in the process),
while Mark Selby beat Mark King 5-1 (no fireworks, but a splendid 141
clearance).
Mark Joyce denied Mark Allen a place in the next round with a 5-2
unquestionable victory, while Michael Holt pushed away Gerard Greene with an
outstanding 5-0 scoreline.
Wednesday sees another day of cue action here in Australia's Bendigo (same
crazy hours for the European continent I'm afraid), so here is the order of
play:
11:30
Marco Fu v. Martin Gould
Michael White v. Hossein Vafaei Ayouri
12:30
Mark Davis v. Jamie Jones
Shaun Murphy v. Ali Carter
19:00
Judd Trump v. Ian Burns
Stephen Maguire v. Ricky Walden
* all hours are local time (aka. Australia)
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