Here is WST report on day 2 at the 2024 Ranking Championship League Snooker:

Mark Williams got his 33rd professional season underway with a fine display at the BetVictor Championship League as he topped Group Four to reach the second stage. 

Welshman Williams, who turns 50 next year, won the Tour Championship in April with one of his best performances in recent years, and is still ranked among the world’s top ten.

He opened today with a 2-2 draw against amateur Connor Benzey, making breaks of 90 and 99, then went on to beat Fergal Quinn 3-0 with a top run of 101 and David Grace 3-0 with breaks of 87 and 115.

Former Shoot Out champion Chris Wakelin finished top of Group 17 and he joins Williams in progressing to the second stage, which starts on June 28. A 3-0 defeat of Rory McLeod got Wakelin up and running, and he went on to beat Liam Pullen 3-0 before securing top spot with a 2-2 draw against Ian Burns. 

Results / Fixtures

Again I have replaced the WST link with the equivalent snooker.org link as the latter will stay valid over time.

The day didn’t start too well as it was confirmed that Bai Yulu had to withdraw because of travel issues. It’s a great shame because this would have been the perfect “introduction” for her with three matches guaranteed. She was replaced by Fergal Quinn.

The above report doesn’t do Connor Benzey justice. Connor who is 22 years old and an amateur ran “Willo” extremely close. So close that Mark HAD to win his last match to be certain to go through and even that may, on another day, not have been enough because the match between Mark and Connor had ended up in a draw, and a 3-1 win for Mark in his last match would have put them on the same amount of points and the same frame difference. On this occasion though it would have made no difference as Williams had the highest break of the two. David Grace on the other hand was well below par.

I saw very little of the other group but it seems that Ian Burns, who came second to Chris Wakelin, was in good scoring mode. In his first match of the day, a 3-0 win over Liam Pullen, he scored a 98 and a 113. The latter was a maximum attempt: Ian missed the 15th black. Amazingly, Liam Pullen himself missed on a maximum during his last match of the day, a 2-2 draw with Rory Mc Leod. Frame three was re-racked in that match, then Liam potted 13 reds with blacks … only to miss the 14th red.