It was Ding Junhui who was the first man though after coming back from 3-1 behind to win a quality contest with Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 4-3. Un-Nooh opened up with a fantastic 97 clearance, before Ding hit back with a 92 to level the scores. Runs o 84 and 74 then put the Thai one away but he missed his chance to kill the match off in frame five and never seemed to recover afterwards. Ding rattled in a 65 in frame six to force the decider and then killed it off in style with a stunning break of 108 in which he pulled off a number of brilliant recovery pots.
Joe Perry was the next man through in the afternoons second match against Ali Carter. Perry took the opener before Carter levelled with a break of 69 but after that he struggled to stay in the game as breaks of 87 and 66 saw Perry surge and with a high pot success compared to a very low one from his opponent it was the Gentleman that ran out a comfortable 4-1 winner.
Shaun Murphy was next up when play resumed in the evening, taking on China's Liang Wenbo (who he will also play in the first round of the Players Championship Finals in a week and a half). Liang had the first chance in the opener but after a missed red with the rest he never seemed to get going again. Murphy made a 71 in that frame and then followed with breaks of 50, 50 and 55 with Liang only scoring 7 more points in a 4-0 victory that it took Murphy less than an hour to complete.
Finally, it was the turn of world champion Stuart Bingham who has been suffering with a little bit of illness over the last couple of days but that did not stop him from disposing of the last Welshman in the draw in Llandudno. Day opened up with 60 and did lead at one stage 2-1. Four 60+ breaks in the match did the job for Bingham who took advantage of his opponents mistakes and saw him continue a bit of good form that he has picked up this week.
Quarter-Final Results:
Stuart Bingham 4-2 Ryan Day
Joe Perry 4-1 Ali Carter
Shaun Murphy 4-0 Liang Wenbo
Ding Junhui 4-3 Thepchaiya Un-Nooh
Semi-Final Preview: (Picks in Bold)
Joe Perry Vs Stuart Bingham - Now we are into the semi-finals the format moves on to the best-of-11 frames and the first semi-final we have sees Joe Perry take on the World Champion. Perry has been very good indeed this week dropping just a couple of frames in best-of-7 frames matches with tough opponents in Barry Hawkins, Kyren Wilson and Ali carter and if he can carry on like that then he will certainly take some stopping over the course of this weekend. Bingham has certainly been battling this week, more with the bug he has had than anything else. On the table he slowly seems to be getting some of his world championship winning rhythm and form back, and even though he has missed some easy balls in his victories over Ryan Day and Judd Trump in the last two rounds, h has also scored when it was needed. The difference in this match for me could be that fact that Bingham still seems to be battling with himself and is taking every miss to heart, while Perry is looking confident on the table and sounding very upbeat about his chances in his interviews with the ITV and there is no substitute for what confidence can bring in sport.Shaun Murphy Vs Ding Junhui - Our second semi-final sees two players in Shaun Murphy and Ding Junhui who seem to be back to their best as they reach their first full ranking event semi-finals of the season respectively. Murphy has blitzed through three very tough matches on paper against Michael White, Martin Gould and Liang Wenbo for just the loss of a single frame. He is scoring well, knocking in some good long balls and says that after tinkering with things in practice and "wasting half a season" he is back playing how he was at the world championships last year which makes him very dangerous. Ding Junhui has played equally as well this week although he has had a couple of battles in deciding frame wins against Woollaston and Un-Nooh which he could easily have lost. He looks to be back at his best though and is very relaxed even with his situation of getting back into the top 16 for the Crucible. One thing that does go for Murphy here is that the players met on three occasions two seasons ago (when Ding won five ranking titles) and beat him in two of those, and overall he has a pretty good record against the Chinaman.
This is a particularly interesting line-up for the weekend in Llandudno given the fact that Bingham, Murphy and Ding have all struggled for results in the big ranking events this season and even Perry has had his tough times this season. Some exciting matches are certainly on the horizon in the final stages of the 2016 World Grand Prix.
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