Maguire one away from Crucible place

Stephen Maguire is one win away from qualifying for the World Championships as a seeded player after getting into the quarter-finals of the China Open. After Ding Junhui exited early Maguire knew that he would need to get to the semi-finals to leapfrog him and move up to 16th in the seedings list. A 5-1 victory over Dominic Dale kept him on track today and he will now face Alfie Burden in the do or die match on Friday.

 

Burden has had a good week so far himself beating Rory McLeod 5-1 today. Mark King is another non top 16 player into the quarter-finals after whitewashing Martin O'Donnell, while Noppon Saengkham beat Graeme Dott 5-1 to make it three players from outside of the top 16 into the quarter-finals.

 

Judd Trump was in a very quick mode again today beating Marco Fu 5-1 inside of an hour after a similar victory the day before against Jimmy Robertson.

 

John Higgins was equally as good in his match with David Gilbert, who did very little wrong himself in a high quality contest that saw the Scot score a 5-3 win.

 

Finally, in the bottom quarter of the draw we saw the World champion Stuart Bingham play well again to beat Rod Lawler 5-2, and he will now play Ricky Walden who has continued his run of form after reaching the Players Championship Final to beat Tian Pengfei in a decider to clinch his place in the last eight.

 

Last 16 Results:

Stephen Maguire 5-1 Dominic Dale
Alfie Burden 5-1 Rory McLeod
Judd Trump 5-1 Marco Fu
Mark King 5-0 Martin O'Donnell
Noppon Saengkham 5-1 Graeme Dott
John Higgins 5-3 David Gilbert
Ricky Walden 5-4 Tian Pengfei
Stuart Bingham 5-2 Rod Lawler

 

Quarter Finals Draw: (Picks in Bold)

Stephen Maguire Vs Alfie Burden
Judd Trump Vs Mark King
John Higgins Vs Noppon Saengkham
Stuart Bingham Vs Ricky Walden

 

Most people are now looking towards a potential John Higgins Vs Judd Trump final this week, given the way that both have played so far. However, Bingham seems to be coming back into form as well while Ricky Walden has looked in very good touch which makes that a brilliant quarter-final match-up. As for the rest, a lot of pressure is on Maguire to win tomorrow which probably makes Alfie Burden the most likely of the three lower ranked underdogs to progress into the semi-finals.

 

So then, a very important day tomorrow for Stephen Maguire as well as other guys like Stuart Bingham who are looking to find form ahead of the World Championships and of course Alfie Burden, Mark King and Noppon Saengkham will be searching for maiden ranking titles.