Round up of the snooker news from day 2 of the International Championships.
Ronnie O’Sullivan opened up his campaign today at the International Championships in China, playing Xiao Guodong in a closer battle than expected.
The Rocket got out of the blocks in fine form, making a break of 137 which impressed the excited Chinese fans.
Following on from that, the match went quite scrappy for a period of a couple of frames but O’Sullivan going to the interval with a 3-1 lead over Xiao.
Following the interval, it was Xiao who dominated the next couple of frames where he leveled the match up at 3-3. Although this was not a vintage O’Sullivan performance, he was good enough to win the scrappy frames and win the match 6-4.
Elsewhere the other snooker news is that Ricky Walden beat Ken Doherty 6-3 and although Ken was playing quite well (making a break of 133) it was not to be the Irishman’s day.
One of the players to watch this week is the home favorite, Ding Junhui who showed his pedigree today against David Grace. Breaks of 90, 59, 125 and 84 was more than enough to win.
World No.1 and current world champion, Mark Selby also saw off his opponent, Alfie Burden in a convincing performance. Following Selby’s disappointment at the English Open last week, he will be keen to make amends this week.
Joining these players in the next round is John Higgins, Judd Trump and Neil Robertson just to name a few, but who will go the whole way this week?
Has O’Sullivan found enough in his game yet to win here or does it still require more match play to become more sharp? There is no doubt about it, O’Sullivan is not at his very best by any means, but as we all know, he could spark into life at any moment at all.
Keeping up the quantity of tournaments is exhausting but most of the players seem to enjoy it.
