The first round of the 2024 Scottish Open concluded yesterday afternoon, and the second round started in the evening. Here is the report by WST:

BETVICTOR SCOTTISH OPEN QUALIFIERS DAY TWO

Edinburgh’s Dean Young booked a place in the final stages of his home tournament with a superb 4-3 win over Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the BetVictor Scottish Open qualifiers in Sheffield on Tuesday.

Following up Monday’s 4-2 victory over Daniel Womersley, Young came from 3-2 down to beat Un-Nooh, taking the deciding frame with a break of 59. The 22-year-old is through to the last 64 of the world ranking event and will be among the field for the televised stages in his home city in December.

Glasgow’s Anthony McGill also made it through as breaks of 80 and 89 helped him beat Allan Taylor 4-2. Last season’s Rookie of the Year He Guoqiang top scored with 116 in a 4-0 defeat of Louis Heathcote. India’s Ishpreet Singh Chadha, a semi-finalist at the BetVictor English Open, enjoyed a 4-2 success against Sanderson Lam with a top break of 92.

Belgium’s Julien Leclercq edged out Jamie Clarke 4-3 with a top break of 95, while Lyu Haotian came from 3-0 down to beat Wang Yuchen 4-3, taking the last four frames with a top run of 87.

In round one, Jimmy White saw off Hatem Yassen 4-1 to set up a second round tie with Jackson Page on Wednesday. 

The final stages at the Meadowbank Centre in Edinburgh run from December 9-15.

All the detailed results are available on snooker.org.

There were eight round 1 matches played yesterday, but typically only the one involving Jimmy White is reported on. Two of the female players, Bai Yulu and Baipat Siripaporn. Both were beaten heavily. I had hoped that Bai, who has been competing successfully with the male young players in China, would do better than the other women on tour, but, alas, that does not seem to be the case.

There was an interesting round 1 match between the vastly experienced Hammad Miah and Haris Tahir, a rookie from Pakistan. The rookie prevailed by 4-3, from 3-1 down. Tahir is a good match player.

Jimmy Robertson beat Ben Mertens by 4-2. The turning point in the match was frame 4. It went to a re-spotted black at 59-59 and Jimmy won it. That appeared to take the stuffing out of Ben, that and probably fatigue. The Belgian youngsters don’t live in the UK, they travel every time they need to play. On one side it’s probably good psychologically that they continue to live with their families, but, on the other side, all those travels are tiring.

The last session of the day is completely overlooked in this report … likely because the person in charge had called it a day. I didn’t, despite living in Greece where we are two hours later than in the UK.

• Fan Zhengyi beat Andrew Higginson by 4-0 without making any break of note. It was probably a very scrappy affair.
• Stuart Carrington beat Aaron Hill by 4-1. Aaron had won the first frame with a break of 67, but scored only 16 points in the rest of the match. Stuart had a break of 132 in frame 2.
• Ricky Walden beat Huang Jihao by 4-2. Huang had led 2-1, aided by breaks of 60 and 53. From there, the more experienced Ricky dominated, finishing the match with breaks of 67 and exactly 100.
• Antoni Kowalski beat Joe Perry by 4-3 in an extremely hard-fought match. There was never more than one frame difference in the scores from start to finish. Antoni scored the only century of the match: a 127 in frame 3.
• Scott Donaldson beat Amir Sarkosh by 4-3, in the small hours of the night. It was an extremely hard-fought match. Every single frame was close. Scott lead 3-0 only for Amir to come back and force a decider. The highest break of the match was a 53, by Scott. He scored it in frame 4, a frame he actually lost.