Snooker Players

China Open 2011 - First Round Results

Just like with the Masters a few months back, many top seeds fell at the very first hurdle in this year's Bank of Beijing China Open first round. This included the likes of defending champion Mark Williams, Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Maguire.

The first big match up was the tie between Matthew Stevens and Stephen Hendry. Unfortunately for me I managed to get none of my predictions right from these first round matches but I was happy with the result of this one as Stephen was the comfortable winner 5-0. The seven-times world champion completely froze out Matthew with the aid of breaks of 100, 93, 75 and 96 to put him back with a chance of remaining in the top 16 at the end of the season. He will now have a rematch of the 2005 China Open final against Ding Junhui who himself fended off Norway's Kurt Maflin after finding himself 4-1 behind to win 5-4.

Stephen lee

In my opinion the biggest match so far had to be the one between Stephen Lee and defending champion Mark Williams. What made it so special is that the match had a record. Mark had made a century break in every frame he won (100, 113, 104, 137) and he went on to lose the match in the decider, and what a decider it was! Mark got in amongst the balls and looked safe and clear as there was many safe reds along the cushion. But in what was one of the best clearances I have seen, Stephen managed to pot the log including cannoning the safe reds into pottable positions and even potting the deciding final black with the rest! Mark admitted that he was gutted he was going home but he was happy with his game and will still be one of the favourites looking towards the Crucible. An amazing win for Stephen who keeps his great season going and now he will face Ryan Day in the next round who came through against...

Ryan Day

Nonother than the Rocket, Ronnie O'Sullivan. At first both players were looking good, making a century break a piece (including a spectacular 129 from Ronnie) going into the mid-session interval 2-2. But after that Ronnie seemed to take liberties with his shot and go for pots that maybe he shouldnt of which allowed Ryan with some amazing run of the ball on occasion to take the next three frames to win the match 5-2. Ronnie will be dissapointed to lose to Ryan for the second tournament in a row but now he has 16 days where he can drive out his demons and practice like a mad man before the big one comes. Dominic Dale shouldn't pose as much of a threat as Ryan Day is but the Spaceman can play just as well sometimes. You can watch this match on the Maximum Snooker YouTube Channel.

Mark Davis EPTC4 2010

Another one of the top seeds to crash out is the Welsh Open finalist Stephen Maguire against Hastings' Mark Davis. I didn't get too see any of this match but it looked to be a good one as Mark was battling hard in what was his last tournament of the season and it showed with breaks of 64, 88, 73 and a cool 137 in the final frame to beat the resurgent Scot 5-3. Mark will fancy the job against Judd Trump who himself knocked out seed Marco Fu in their match. Breaks of 80 and 62 amongst many scrappy frames got Judd over the line by a 5-3 scoreline.

Special mention goes to wildcard Li Hang who has now defeated two world champions in the form of Ken Doherty in the wildcard round and now Graeme Dott (5-4) in the first round proper. I still disagree with the wildcard system but it is nice that atleast one of them has made the second round and it adds a bit of flavour to the tournament.

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China Open 2011 - Full Results & Last 16 Draw:

Wildcard Round:

Kurt Maflin 5-3 Cao Yupeng

Marcus Campbell 5-3 Mei Xi Wen

Robert Milkins 5-1 Rouzi Maimaiti

Jimmy White o/w Tian Pengfei

Nigel Bond 5-3 Jin Long

Ken Doherty 1-5 Li Hang

Joe Perry 5-2 Li Yan

Gerard Greene 5-2 Yu Delu

First Round:

Mark Williams 4-5 Stephen Lee