Luca Brecel has beaten Stephen Maguire 6-3 despite a good performance from the Scot
Luca Brecel from Belgium has been tipped as one of the best players of the new generation, but has yet to rise to the top ranks within snooker. The attacking and flamboyant 21 year old has yet to prove himself consistently at the latter stages of big events.
His best performance this year came at the German Masters, where he was beaten by Martin Gould in the final.
In the match tonight, Brecel took the two opening frames by narrow margins but Stephen Maguire responded with two consecutive centuries to square the match up going into the interval.
After going 3-3, Brecel then began to break away from Maguire by taking the next two frames. In the next, both players had multiple chances, but when Maguire was ahead, Brecel potted an outrageous fluke and went on to clear the rest of the table to seal victory.
Luca Brecel will now face Shaun Murphy in the quarter finals tomorrow.
In the final match of the last 16, former world and UK champion, Mark William was up against Liam Highfield.
Both Williams and Highfield shared the frames throughout the majority of the match, with sporadic spouts of good snooker mixed in with some sloppy snooker which made for some gripping viewing.
This match had the makings of a 5-5 late night decider from the very start, and that’s exactly what we got.
In the final frame, Liam Highfield was the first player to get a chance amongst the balls, and in fact, had multiple chances to score, but failed to make his chances count.
When Mark Williams came to the table, he took advantage of his chances, and scored enough over a few chances to win the frame and match.
Mark Williams will now play Ronnie O’Sullivan on Friday evening in a battle of the veterans.
