The qualifiers for the 2023 English Open continued yesterday and this is the report shared by WST:

Pullen In The Right Direction

Tour rookie Liam Pullen won a knock out ranking event match for the first time, beating Ahmed Aly Elsayed 4-0 to reach the final stages of the BetVictor English Open.

Yorkshire’s 18-year-old Pullen qualified for the tour via Q Tour and showed glimpses of his potential during narrow 5-4 defeats to Oliver Brown and Jamie Jones in recent weeks. The former English under-18 champion now has a victory under his belt and can look forward to a trip to Brentwood for the season’s first BetVictor Home Nations event next month. Breaks of 70, 90, 55 and 74 were the highlights of an impressive performance from the teenager.

Six-time ranking event winner Stephen Maguire trailed Daniel Wells three times but recovered to win 4-3. Breaks of 130, 65 and 131 helped Maguire to win a high quality tussle.

Veterans Stephen Hendry and Ken Doherty both suffered heavy 4-0 defeats. Hendry was up against Fergal O’Brien in a match where the combined age of the two players was 105. O’Brien came out on top with a high break of 69.  Doherty was whitewashed by Jackson Page, whose top breaks were 58 and 56.

Scott Donaldson edged out Long Zehuang 4-3 thanks to a run of 55 in the decider while David Lilley earned a 4-1 success against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. David Gilbert knocked in 103, 93 and 105 during a 4-1 defeat of Dean Young. Allan Taylor beat Jak Jones 4-3, coming from 52-0 down in the decider to take it with a break of 65.

Once again a very incomplete report … all the results can be found on snooker.org.

Mink was whitewashed by Cao Yupeng who was again in high scoring mode, with breaks of 66, 96, 83 and 71.

Ben Mertens who beat Shaun Murphy earlier this week was whitewashed by Zhang Anda. Ben didn’t play well and Zhang Anda, in the balls, is extremely reliable; he punished nearly every one of Ben’s mistakes . He won the first frame with a 101, then scored breaks of 59, 56 and 55 in the next three. As for Ben, maybe a bit of tiredness kicked in? He has so far got a very good season, and has beaten some top players. The Belgian players travel from Belgium for every match in the UK. The young players stay with their family, which has huge benefits: they aren’t lonely, they have the support they need and they are kept safe from temptations and bad influences. But, of course, it’s a lot of traveling and it’s tiring.

Thepchaiya Un-nooh, usually a heavy scorer, was beaten by 4-1, by David Lilley.

Lyu Haotian also played poorly by his recent standard, but mainly, Chris Wakelin who beat him by 4-1, played well and scored well. Chris transformation over the last year has been spectacular.

The Duffy v Sarkis match was a slow and extremely “painful to watch” affair. They were pulled off at 3-1, and they had already overrun the next scheduled match.

The last match to finish was the Matthew Selt v Alfie Burden one. Selt won by 4-2. It was Burden who had the best start, winning the first frame with a 65, that proved to be the only 50+ break of the match. Then came frame 2 … Selt broke off, never played another shot and won the frame. How? Well, Burden tried to nestle into the pack “from behind”, after bouncing from the top cushion. He failed 3 times to hit a red and because he wasn’t snookered on all reds, he lost the frame on the “three miss rule”. Burden was clearly affected by the incident.

I also watched a bit of the Hendry match… it was depressing. I will never tell a player when they should quit, as they have every right to continue to play if they so wish, but I found it hard to watch … and I was never a Hendry fan¹. It must be even worse for them.

In general, I have the feeling that conditions aren’t great. I’m not at all an “authority” when it comes to judging conditions, but there have been a number of shots I saw, played with side, that clearly didn’t yield the outcome the player expected…

1. Nor was I a Hendry “hater” BTW. I wasn’t following snooker when he was at his best. ↩︎