There are two rounds of qualifying matches for the 2025 Northern Ireland Open and, yesterday was the first day of the first round. Hereafter you will find the short report shared by WST:
Pengcheng Floors Ken
China’s Yao Pengcheng continue to show promise in his debut pro season as he beat Ken Doherty 4-1 in the first qualifying round of the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open.
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Earlier this week, 28-year-old Yao beat Zak Surety 5-1 to qualify for the Xi’an Grand Prix, and he notched another notable scalp with a comfortable win over former Crucible king Doherty. He will meet Oliver Lines on Saturday with the winner to go through to the final stages in Belfast next month.
Marco Fu opened with breaks of 104 and 114 and went on to beat Amir Sarkhosh 4-2. Liam Graham top scored with 96 in a 4-0 defeat of Chris Totten while Farakh Ajaib potted brown, blue and pink in the deciding frame to edge out Oliver Brown 4-3.
Julien Leclercq top scored with 99 in a 4-2 defeat of Florian Nuessle, while Ian Burns made a 130 during a 4-0 win over Haydon Pinhey.
As always, all the results are available on snooker.org
I’m very pleased for Julien who really needed a good result as he appeared to struggle recently, but I would have preferred if it came against someone other than Florian. Another young player from mainland Europe also registered a win: Antoni Kowalski beat Zak Sheldon, an amateur from Northern Ireland. I had never heard of Zak before, I know next to nothing about him1 and, to be honest, he didn’t impress me at all. That said, he’s probably not used to professional conditions and the environment was hardly inspiring.
Intrigued by Lewis’ comment, I watched the match between Sunny Akani and Xu Yi Chen. It was good fun and I’m happy for Sunny who won it. Xu can pot for sure but, yeah, he’s peculiar.
In other news … 2025 English Open Draw
WST has published the draw for the 2025 English Open
Robertson To Defend English Title In Strong Brentwood Field
Neil Robertson will defend his BetVictor English Open title in the world ranking event which runs from September 11-21 at the Brentwood Centre in Essex, with the draw and format now available.
Click here for the draw and match schedule
The field is packed with snooker’s star names including world number one Judd Trump, World Champion Zhao Xintong, Kyren Wilson, Mark Williams, Shaun Murphy, Mark Selby, Wuhan Open champion Xiao Guodong, Mark Allen, local Essex players Ali Carter and Stuart Bingham, and many more.
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The first two rounds run from Thursday September 11th to Sunday September 14th, then the top 32 seeds enter the action from Monday September 15th. The showpiece final will be on Sunday September 21st.
Australia’s Robertson lifted the Steve Davis Trophy last year after beating Wu Yize 9-7 in a dramatic final and he’ll start the defence of his title against either Sunny Akani, Oliver Brown on David Lilley. Matches involving the all-time greats in round three include:
Monday September 15
1pm
Kyren Wilson v opponentNot before 2pm
Mark Selby v opponent
7pm
Mark Williams v opponentNot before 8pm
Shaun Murphy v opponentTuesday September 16
1pm
Judd Trump v opponentNot before 2pm
Mark Allen v opponent7pm
Neil Robertson v opponentNot before 8pm
Zhao Xintong v opponentThis is the first of the 2025/26 BetVictor Home Nations Series, with a bonus of £150,000 up for grabs for the players who performs best across the four events in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Robertson banked that bonus last season, with Trump, John Higgins and Robert Milkins winning it in previous years.
No Ronnie in the draw, which didn’t surprise me. He never liked these “packed” events played in Leisure centres and the Final in Saudi Arabia somehow has already “secured” his season even if he has a lot of points to defend.
- I just looked up his results on Cuetracker ↩︎
Ronnie O'Sullivan 