Good day at the qualifiers. I was happy to see Luca come back from 4-0 down against Fraser Patrick, nothing against Patrick of course but I think most people would like to see Luca have a good run. It's not over yet though, so looking forward to tomorrow afternoon for the resumption.
Thepchiya Un-Nooh was the stand out player of the completed matches. He seems to get faster and faster as the break goes on and once frame is won he goes into overdrive up to Ronnie speed. He is very very entertaining to watch and a brilliant potter. In the second session he seemed to take his foot off the gas but I guess it's only natural to relax a bit and focus on keeping your opponent at bay when you have control of proceedings. Either way he is certainly capable of coming through his section which contains Ben Woollaston and Ryan Day. So watch out for that and I hope he gets streamed in Round 2.
Not a lot to report from the other matches really. Michael Wasley always seemed to be getting the better of Sean O'Sullivan when I looked but Sean lead 6-5 at one point and then Wazza proceeded to run out the next 5 frames for a 10-6 win. Un-Nooh and Tian Pengfai are the only players from the matches that finished that I can see winning their next match though.
O'Neill v TT was very scrappy, lots of chances missed from both players but the battle on the colours at 9-8 to TT was worth watching. O'Neill played some great safeties and was in control until TT knocked in a good long green, then the brown then attempted a long rail blue into green pocket screwing across for match ball pink. The blue missed and this is what happened next.
This was Jamie O'Neill's last shot. He was 4 points behind and the pros watching all applauded. It was a great shot especially considering the pressure.
And this is what TT did next:
Fluked the blue and landed plumb on match ball! The look on everyone's face was classic. Luca in particular found it highly amusing in a "I can't believe that just happened" way!
I'm looking forward to tomorrow but think I'll watch most of Pankaj v Swail before I head out for live action and the resumption of Luca v Fraser. One other thing from today is that Cao Yupeng has joined twitter and he seems a bit of a character. I don't know exactly why although Chinese are known for changing their names, but he's calling himself Eric! You can follow him here
https://twitter.com/ECaoyupeng