After a day of dominance on day one of the group from Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Davis, that continued as the pair finished as the top two in the group with 5 wins each, Davis's defeat coming against O'Sullivan, while Ronnie lost a decider against Peter Ebdon. They were joined in the semi-finals by David Gilbert whose 3 wins on the first day were enough to get him through after he lost his remaining two games on Tuesday, Fergal O'Brien won one of his remaining two to join David on three points and scrape into fourth spot. In the no-mans land spot of 5th was Peter Ebdon who clawed two wins from his final three games, and in taking Liang Wenbo to a decider in his final game, was able to win enough frames to see him finish above Michael White who was eliminated on two wins from his six games, after only one win from two on the final day. Liang Wenbo propped up the table, only managing to win his final game of six and he is also eliminated from the group.
In the semi-finals Mark Davis was a fairly comfortable winner against David Gilbert 3-1, after Davis had beaten Gilbert in the final group game 3-2 only an hour or so before. Meanwhile, Ronnie O'Sullivan stormed into an early 2-0 lead against Fergal O'Brien before the Irishman came back to force the decider, but it was O'Sullivan that was able to do enough to get through to the group final. Once in that final, Ronnie looked very comfortable to win the first two frames again, but Davis played well to fight back, avoiding a third consecutive group final defeat and beating Ronnie O'Sullivan 3-2. This is my nice notepad picture of everything that happened yesterday in full:
In today and tomorrow's group six we have a slight change which has seen Martin Gould and Ronnie O'Sullivan withdraw from the group and they have been replaced by Rod Lawler and Ben Woollaston. That will certainly see one for the purists at some stage of the group when Lawler plays Peter Ebdon, and with Dominic Dale and Fergal O'Brien in the group as well it's not going to be a fast paced group. The other new addition to the group is big Kurt Maflin, while David Gilbert is the other player moving across from group 5. You have to say that this group is wide open with David Gilbert, Peter Ebdon, Ben Woollaston and Rod Lawler probably being the four best challengers if you ask me.
As always i'll be back with you tomorrow morning to run through what has happened on day one of the sixth group.
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