Ronnie beat Ben Woollaston yesterday in a an excellent match.They both played well. There was no negativity but this was definitely proper snooker.

Here are the scores:

The report by WST is rather minimalist…

In the evening, World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan held off a Ben Woollaston fightback to earn his place in the last 32 with a 4-2 win.

The Rocket took the opening three frames, before Woollaston kept his hopes alive with a superb run of 132. He then took a dramatic fifth by a point on the black to reduce his arrears to 3-2. However, O’Sullivan snuffed out any hopes of a revival with 93 to get over the line.

This wasn’t a particularly easy draw for Ronnie, especially over a short format. Indeed they had played each other three times before in best-of-7 matches, and Ben had prevailed twice, most recently, last season in the Gibraltar Open. Ronnie played at a good pace but nowhere near as fast as in the fist round and he clearly was out there to win. that was good to see.

This evening he will play Gary Wilson, who is in good form. Not an easy match either…

A lot more happened yesterday, including another 147 by Judd Trump. I will cover all that, probably later today, when the second round concludes.