The first day of Indian Open qualifying produced a mixture of results that certainly included a few surprises. One of these unexpected outcomes saw Jackson Page, who celebrates his 16th birthday next week, thrash Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 4-0.
Another slight surprise saw Martin Gould lose out 4-1 to recent World Games bronze medal winner Soheil Vahedi who had clearly taken a lot of confidence from that success in Poland. Ken Doherty continued his fine start to the season, backing up a run to the semi-finals at the Riga Masters in June by beating the World Games silver medal 4-2.
There were also four walkovers on the day, which included 2015 Indian Open champion Michael White withdrawing from his match with Gerard Greene through illness and recent Hong Kong Masters winner Neil Robertson handing Robin Hull a free ticket to India. Robertson's withdrawal was an interesting one as he later posted about being on the practice table with Joe Perry.
Anthony Hamilton and Hossein Vafei came through in deciding frames against Alex Borg and Sanderson Lam respectively. Zhang Anda made short work of Lyu Haotian thanks to breaks of 67, 75, 83 and 102 so he was clearly in top form.
Once I arrived at the venue for the late afternoon and evening games one man in particular impressed me. Jimmy Robertson saw off Jak Jones 4-2 and was in fine scoring form. He completed the match with a century clearance and could and should have had two before that missing simple shots on 92 on both occasions. As well as this he might have finished the match 4-1 but for some misfortune when attempting to bring the last four reds into play, going in-off in the process.
Graeme Dott really had to dig in against China's Fang Xiongman. Dott relinquished a 2-0 lead and soon found himself 3-2 behind. In the sixth he needed to produce a good clearance on the colours to keep himself in the contest, before again coming from behind in the decider to win it on the colours and scrape through to the final stages.
Jack Lisowski looked good in patches of a 4-1 win against Joe Swail after a pretty scrappy start to the match. He made a couple of good breaks in the last two frames but seemed to be missing top gear, but after a stop start season for many of these players with tournaments being sparse over the summer, many players will be clearing the rust in their opening qualifier of the week.
You could certainly forgive Ricky Walden for being rusty in his evening match with Jimmy White, but from what I saw of that one from the other side of the venue, he looked to be playing comfortably. The reason to bring this up is of course as Walden has had some back trouble over the course of the year and (without confirmation) this may have been the reason for 4-0 and 5-0 defeats in his opening qualifiers of the season two months ago to lower ranked players. He certainly did not look to have much trouble getting down on the shot and no winces in pain were noted on the way to a 4-2 victory that he completed with a good clearance in the final frame.
Josh Boileau's 4-3 win over David Grace was a match I had a good view of on table four. Boileau impressed with a century to come back and force the deciding frame after a big break from Grace to go 3-2 ahead. Both players took their time to get into the match, but once the Irishman was able to he actually seemed more comfortable in the final two frames here than he did in beating Shaun Murphy in Cardiff, one of his most notable wins on tour.
Sean O'Sullivan had to dig in against Xiao Guodong as he also came from 3-2 behind. Guodong lost the opener but certainly found his feet in winning the next two with a high break of 82. The twice Shoot-Out runner-up lost the fourth despite chances, and that was the lifeline that O'Sullivan needed. Despite losing the fifth, he controlled the sixth and looked confident as he entered the decider, having seen of everything that Xiao had thrown at him so far. The 56 he made in the decider to seal victory was very classy and the mark of a man that seems to have improved in the last year.
Finally, the match I focused on in the evening between Sam Craigie and Ben Woollaston turned into a tactical affair with a few errors from both players. Craigie had chances in the opener before Woollaston took that one on the colours, but it did not faze the young man who produced the biggest bit of quality in the match in the second frame. A marvellous 126 break was one of pure class that also featured a pot on the yellow from its spot that saw him screw back directly into the pack of reds and opening them all up to complete the break. Even after Woollaston went ahead again, Craigie still looked the stronger player as he squared once more at 2-2. The fifth frame was another case of what might have been though as Woollaston again took it on the colours after Craigie had a big chance to move 3-2 in front and one from victory. That appeared to take the wind from his sails and the higher seeded Woollaston was able to capitalise and get over the line fairly convincingly in frame six for a 4-2 victory.
However, if you have not had enough Sam Craigie for this week, you can still read our guest blog that I put up on Monday with Sam's thoughts on how the early season has gone for him:
http://cueactionsnookerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/guest-blog-sam-craigie.html
As for me, I will be back in the venue at 1pm and will be doing a live blog of Robert Milkins Vs Yuan Sijun and a couple of other matches either in that session or the 4pm session depending on table situations and how long my initial match goes on for, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Otherwise it should be another intriguing day of qualifiers that features the likes of John Higgins, Stephen Maguire, Michael Holt and recent World Games gold medallist Kyren Wilson.
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