The highest seeds that remained in the UK Championships in York coming into the Last 16 stage all eased their way into the quarter-finals over the last two days.
Ronnie O'Sullivan took his tally of frames lost in this tournament to only three from four matches after beating Matthew Stevens 6-2. World Champion Mark Selby continued his easy progress through the last couple of rounds by winning every frame after losing the opener to Zhang Anda who was not short of chances on the night but very wasteful.
Oliver Lines could not keep a run going that contained a victory over Judd Trump and a whitewash win over Jimmy Robertson, as Marco Fu beat Lines 6-0 to record his second whitewash of the tournament. Fu will now meet Jamie Jones who followed up his 6-2 win over Ding Junhui by beating David Gilbert 6-2 also. This means Jones has only dropped seven frames in progressing to the quarter-finals, but Fu has still dropped one less than that.
Tie of the round on paper was not as close as some people might have expected. John Higgins went 2-0 ahead on Mark Allen early on in the match. Higgins fell away for the next few frames though as Allen went 3-2 ahead and had a chance in the sixth to make it four in a row. Having squandered that and seeing Higgins level at 3-3, the Northern Irishman did not win another frame despite having his chances and it was the in-form Higgins that ran out an easy 6-3 winner.
Shaun Murphy showed his experience against Chinese teenager Zhou Yuelong. After going 2-0 Murphy was pegged back to 2-2 at the interval. After changing the set of balls following that break it was Murphy that upped his game with a number of heavy breaks to win all of the next four frames and record a 6-2 win.
Murphy will play Luca Brecel who had fortune on his side in beating Stephen Maguire 6-3. Maguire missed a lot of key balls on the night, and the killer blow in frame nine came after Brecel escaped from a snooker on the penultimate red, fluking it into the middle and clearing up. Otherwise it was a high quality performance from the Belgium who has started to look a lot more comfortable on the TV against top players.
By far the best and most tense match of the Last 16 came between Mark Williams and Liam Highfield going all the way to a decider. Williams was up against it throughout the match as Highfield kept edging himself in front and after he did so at 5-4 there was a strong feeling it could be his night. Chances came in frame ten but overly aggressive shot selection handed that frame to the Welshman, and it was the same story in the final frame as Highfield took on a number of ambitious shots to gift Williams chances and eventually he got over the line.
Last 16 Results:
Mark Williams 6-5 Liam Highfield
Ronnie O'Sullivan 6-2 Matthew Stevens
Jamie Jones 6-2 David Gilbert
Marco Fu 6-0 Oliver Lines
Luca Brecel 6-3 Stephen Maguire
Shaun Murphy 6-2 Zhou Yuelong
John Higgins 6-3 Mark Allen
Mark Selby 6-1 Zhang Anda
The cream has risen to the top then over the last 48 hours and set up a great line-up for Friday's quarter-finals:
Quarter-Final Draw and Schedule:
Friday 2nd December 1pm:
Shaun Murphy Vs Luca Brecel
Mark Selby Vs John Higgins
Friday 2nd December 7pm:
Ronnie O'Sullivan Vs Mark Williams
Marco Fu Vs Jamie Jones
The eye is certainly drawn to one of the afternoon quarter-finals in particular as world number one Mark Selby takes on this seasons China Championship winner and Champion of Champions John Higgins. Both players have hit form in the last couple of rounds and this is anyone's game over the best-of-11 frames. Expect top tactical player and plenty of big breaks to go with that as well. On the whole I was more impressed by Higgins win over Allen in the Last 16 and think that his form right now is going to be very hard to stop.
The other afternoon game puts Shaun Murphy up against Luca Brecel just over a couple of weeks after Brecel thrashed Murphy 4-0 in the first round of the Northern Irish Open with Murphy scoring just eight points. This means Brecel has won their last two meetings and Murphy will want to turn it around by repeating the victory he earned in the 2012 UK quarter-finals. Murphy has played very well at times this week, while Brecel appears to love this event having made his second UK quarter-final already, and reaching the Last 16 in 2015 too.
Jamie Jones has already thrashed Ding Junhui and David Gilbert in this tournament, though both were far from their best. If he can keep his run going against Fu, then it is worth remembering that Fu has very little form this season and has not been gracing the latter stages of ranking events at all so there will be pressure on both players. However, after watching Fu punish Oliver Lines you feel that if Jones does not keep his form going that he will be punished to the maximum as well.
Last but certainly not least is Ronnie O'Sullivan against Mark Williams. This is by far O'Sullivan's toughest match on paper so far this week, having started with three rounds against players outside of the top 64, while his highest ranked opponent was Matthew Stevens the 41st seed. Mark Williams has not been his best this week, though he has already come through two deciding frames which shows his nerves are holding up. The last two times these players have met in major competition, the matches were over the best-of-11 frames and both went the distance. O'Sullivan recorded victory on the way to winning the Masters in January, while back in 2014 Williams ended a long losing run against Ronnie with a 6-5 victory in the International Championship quarter-finals.
That is what we have to look forward to today, and that should leave us a couple of cracking semi-finals for Saturday.
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