Draw Revealed For PTC Finals

Local hero Ken Doherty and WBPSA chairman Jason Ferguson conducted the draw for the Players Tour Championship (PTC) Finals today at the venue where it will be played at in March, the Helix Theatre, Dublin. One of the biggest first round ties is between Ricky Walden and Liang Wenbo.

The PTC finals will be contested in March (more details here). Where the top eight players on the order of merit will be seeded into the second round, with the ranked 9-24 players having to play an extra match.

With some of the top players including Shaun Murphy and Mark Williams seeded through to the second round, the tie of the first round has to be Flintshire's Ricky Walden against China's Liang Wenbo. Thanks to a recent string of last 32 appearances at venue's and performing well in the PTC events, Ricky has elevated himself into the top 16 for the first time in his career, we will hope to prove himself here against Liang, who has looked out of sorts this season, not having many results apart from one PTC final. The winner of that match will face Shaun Murphy in the next round.

Another exciting tie is the match between former UK champion Stephen Maguire and world no.17 Stuart Bingham. Both players have had a decent season so far with both reaching the quarter finals of the UK Championship and Stephen reaching two PTC finals. Stuart also produced one of the shocks of the year by beating Ronnie O'Sullivan in the first round of the UK Championship. Should be a tight match, the winner of which gets to play EPTC winner Marcus Campbell.

The finals will be on the 16th-20th of March and should be covered by EuroSport.

Full Draw:

Ricky Walden v Liang Wenbo (Winner to play Shaun Murphy)
Mark Davis v Joe Jogia (Winner to play Stephen Lee)
Matthew Stevens v Gerard Greene (Winner to play Dominic Dale)
Stuart Bingham v Stephen Maguire (Winner to play Marcus Campbell)
Marco Fu v Michael Holt (Winner to play Barry Pinches)
Jamie Jones v Martin Gould (Winner to play Judd Trump)
Anthony Hamilton v Tom Ford (Winner to play Mark Williams)
Andrew Higginson v Jack Lisowski (Winner to play Mark Selby)

Tickets are available from: http://www.thehelix.ie/2011_Q1/PTCGrandFinal.htm