As the”last 32″ round is still underway in Edinburg with 8 more matches to be played today, we already know that there will be no member of the top 8 in the “last 16” . The carnage continues…
Minister Of Defence Downs Bullet
Martin O’Donnell ended World Champion Luca Brecel’s chances of qualifying for the World Grand Prix and enhanced his own, with a 4-2 win over the Belgian at the BetVictor Scottish Open in Edinburgh.
Both players came into the game knowing that the winner would push themselves into position to earn a place at the World Grand Prix, whilst the loser would be out of the race. Only the top 32 players of the season so far will qualify for the Leicester event and Crucible king Brecel is now destined to finish outside of that bracket.
O’Donnell scored an excellent win over Mark Selby on a run to the quarter-finals of the BetVictor English Open earlier this season and he’s earned an equally impressive result in the Scottish capital this week.
Brecel took the opener this evening, before breaks of 59, 75 and 70 from O’Donnell saw him establish a 3-1 lead. A 44-minute fifth went the way of Brecel to keep him in contention, but O’Donnell crafted a fine run of 85 to get over the line and seal an an important win.
“It feels great. Out there playing the World Champion on the main stage and to score like I did was great. It felt really nice,” said world number 80 O’Donnell.
“I had a really good win on the main table against Mark Selby at the English Open and that helped me out there today. That experience of beating someone of that stature, a multiple World Champion. I played well that day. It gives you the belief that you can do it again and thankfully I did today.”
Matthew Selt prevailed in a 76-minute deciding frame to conquer four-time World Champion Selby 4-3 and earn his place in the last 16.
It’s the first time that Selt has beaten Selby in a ranking event and earns him a clash with Thailand’s Noppon Saengkham in the next round. The marathon final frame this evening came all the way down to the colours, where Selby crucially spurned a brown. Selt potted from brown topink to earn a big victory.
Selt said: “It’s a fantastic result for me and a big scalp. I’ve never beaten Mark before in a ranking event and the pressure got the best of me in the decider. I thought I played really well up until that. I had a couple of chances and started to freeze a bit because of my record against him. I counted myself very lucky in the end, but I potted some good balls and I’d like to think I was the worthy winner.”
Kyren Wilson put on a sensational performance to defeat former Welsh Open winner Jordan Brown 4-0 in just 45 minutes.
Such was the dominance of Wilson, his opponent only accrued three minutes and 41 seconds of table time throughout the whole match. Wilson fired in breaks of 126, 74, 129 and 106 on his way to the win. He now plays David Gilbert.
Scotland’s John Higgins defeated Ricky Walden 4-3 with the clock just shy of midnight, while Tom Ford scored a late night 4-3 win against Ding Junhui.
As it stands, John Higgins is the only member of the top 16 who is currently guaranteed to play in the round of 16: Kyren Wilson and Zhang Anda both need to win their match this afternoon to get there and Kyren faces a tough opponent in David Gilbert.
Martin O’Donnell played well in beating Luca Brecel. He’s nicknamed “the Minister of Defence” but, to his credit, yesterday he played an open attacking game and it paid off. Yes, he’s rather slow, but his shot selection was positive.
Earlier in the day, Sam Craigie played well to beat Yuan Sijun who was unusually poor. Gary Wilson beat the young Xing Zihao by 4-3 from 3-1 down. Xing suffered a bad case of “clinching disease”. From 3-1 up, his game deteriorated and his whole facial expression and body language were crying “anxiety!”. I found it hard to watch and that’s nothing against Gary Wilson. I know that many fans find the view of a player unraveling badly “compelling” but I’m not like that.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
I hate this system of qualifiers for the Home Nations, and it not being a tiered format. The old way (pre-Covid) of 8 tables and all 128 players starting in Round 1 AT THE VENUE was much better. Now, the Top 16 get “held over” and don’t have to “qualify”, but have to win 7 matches in a week to win the event, while the other players have to qualify weeks in advance but only have to win 6 matches in a week to win the event. It’s bad all round. Look at what’s happened this week to the “top seeds”. I love a good underdog story, but the current structure of the Home Nations have turned them (and future rankings) into a mess.
Absolutely true. This heldover stuff might be good for the fans and saves the top players from the “horrors” of the qualifying venue, but means an extra match to them and their lowranked opponent.
Really? We’re just in round 3. The seven matches to win the event cannot possibly account for the dearth of top 8 players reaching round 4, don’t you think? Moreover, with just best-of-7 matches to play so far, going that distance shouldn’t be a problem for a battle-hardened professional aiming for a world title.
Oh, and Monique:
You probably meant “Gary Wilson” – or am I missing something?
No not missing anything. Thank you. Not sure why Sam Craigie came to my mind writing this sentence, other than – maybe – the fact that I found Yuan Sijun struggling badly also hard to watch.
yes. That said the 8 tables system meant that 4 tables weren’t streamed which put the players who were “assigned” to them at a disadvantage. Sponsors want to be seen. It also meant more players/ refs at the venue in the early days, and the need for more practice tables. and more fitters. The real solution would be to play those events over 9-10 days but that, of course, would bring other issues.