O’Sullivan recovered from a slow start against Woollaston, winning easily in the end to set up a match with Matthew Selt in the Coral UK Snooker.

The Rocket, who first won the tournament at the age of 17, said he felt much more at ease playing on his broken ankle today following extensive work with the physiotherapy team at Sheffield United during the past few days.But despite his improved health, O’Sullivan was struggling early on as Wollaston pulled out some excellent pots to win frames two and three – the second on the final black and the third with a well-worked 87 break – to lead 2-1. 

 Crucially, O’Sullivan took the fourth frame with a 56 break to head into the interval at 2-2. Following a chat with psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters at the interval, he found an extra gear and won the next four in a row thanks to runs of 65, 104 and 84.”I didn’t really settle in the first four frames but I managed to get it to 2-2 so I was pleased to come through in the end,” said O’Sullivan, five time winner of the World Championship. 

“If I’m in the right frame of mind and I feel like I’m cueing alright, the scoreboard doesn’t really play much of a part. I’d rather be 4-0 down and feeling good and positive about my game than 4-0 up and feeling rubbish. It’s just about getting your mind right really and I did in the end and felt a bit more settled.  

“The ankle is much better – today is the first day where I actually felt I could walk without worrying about whether I was going to fall over. I had total confidence in it so didn’t have to think about it. “It was still a bit sore because there is still a lot of swelling around it but I’ve been doing some exercises on it which has told my brain that it is strong enough to hold up. It’s just a twisting and turning that I’m not 100 per cent with it. 

 “Thanks to the Sheffield United physio team because without them I probably wouldn’t have been playing out there – I’ll be back down there tomorrow.”Defending champion Neil Robertson is also through to the fourth round following a 6-2 victory over Peter Ebdon. 

 The Australian went into the match with a poor record against the 2006 UK Champion, having lost all of their previous five meetings in full ranking events, and it took what he considered his best performance of the season to register his first win over the 44-year-old. 

Robertson started the match brightly, winning four of the first five frames thanks to breaks of 74, 108, 84 and 70. Ebdon closed to 4-2 by taking the sixth frame but Robertson, who could recapture his spot at the top of the rankings this week, finished the match off with runs of 78 and 65. 

“I’d say that was probably the best performance of my season so far, especially when you’re playing such a great player like Peter,” said the 2010 World Champion. “I had a different mind-set coming in, I knew I had to play well and to be at the top of my game to win and I was very pleased with my performance today. 

“The only ball that I can think of that I missed was a green in the second frame but other than that it was faultless. The only thing you could probably say is that maybe I could have had a few more centuries but perhaps that might be asking a bit much.” 

He faces Graeme Dott in the next round after the Scot put in a brilliant performance to whitewash world number 16 Robert Milkins, laying a dent into the Gloucester-man’s Masters qualification hopes. 

Dott, whose best run in this competition came back in 2006 when he reached the semi-finals, was in free-scoring form knocking in runs of 117, 120 and 127 as he consigned Milkins, who was still struggling with an eye infection, to a 6-0 defeat. 

Stuart Bingham is also into the last 16, although he was made to work very hard for his victory by a gritty performance from hot prospect Joel Walker, who took him to a final frame decider. 

20-year-old Walker was quick out of the blocks, winning the first three frames with top breaks of 59 and 56. The next two frames were shared but then Bingham, winner of the Shanghai Masters back in September, began to show his class, reeling off the next three to go within a frame of victory. 

Walker, who made it to the last eight of the Welsh Open earlier this year, hit a brilliant run of 83 to make it 5-5. And he had two chances in the decider but could only build a 35-0 lead, allowing Bingham to step in with a 95 clearance.

 

By Mark Rawlinson

Added a video Clip : Dr Steve Peters Ronnie’s helper

 

China’s 14-year-old Yan Bingtao today scripted a sensational upset as he sent Indian ace Pankaj Advani packing with a 6-4 victory in the quarter-finals of the Seaways IBSF World Snooker Championship, here today.
On the day at the Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium, Advani, who has 12 world titles across all formats till date, could not concentrate on his game and did not play big points as the Chinese schoolboy.

Advani could barely contain his frustration as he blasted the crowd for causing distractions during the match resulting in him breaking down at crucial stages of the match. At one point, the chief referee had to be called and request the crowd to maintain silence.
However, the bottom line was that Advani, who spent two years on the professional tour, attaining a best ranking of 58 before returning to amateur fold earlier this year to focus on billiards, did not play well enough against Bingtao, who made better use of the openings. “I was repeatedly distracted by movements in the crowd. I know that as a professional, I should not allow these distractions to impact my game, but today, it did. Also, I missed too many balls and did not utilise the chances that came my way,” said Advani.

“I didn’t score heavily enough to hurt my opponent. Bingtao also did not play too well but capitalised on the chances I gave him. The bottom line was that I didn’t play well and didn’t deserve to win.”

There was little to separate Advani and Bingtao. The Indian took a 2-0 lead with a break of 57 in the second frame but Bingtao came roaring back to take the third on a run of 107 as the Chinese won three frames in a row for a 3-2 lead before Advani caught up at 3-3.

A break of 79 gave Bingtao the seventh frame but again Advani levelled by taking a close eighth. Thereafter, both players were tense and committed too many errors but the young Chinese kept his wits about him to go 5-4 up.

Advani had his chances in the crucial 10th frame, especially at the business end when he was on a clearance to make it 5-5 but a miss on the brown which he attempted with a stun-follow shot to come for the blue, left Bingtao on and the Chinese gobbled up the colours to seal the match.

Bingtao, who had beaten Indian hope Pankaj Advani 6-4 in the quarter-finals earlier in the day, was stretched to breakpoint by Lertsattayathom in a marathon semi-final that lasted four hours and saw just two half-century breaks – 54 by the Chinese and 62 by the Thai.

In the best-of-15 frames final on Saturday, Sajjad, who beat India’s Manan Chandra 6-1 in the previous round, takes on another Chinese, 14-year old Yan Bingtao who won a battle of attrition 7-5 against Thailand’s Kritsnut Lertsattayathom in a match that lasted four hours.

 

Steve Davis I hated Stephen Hendry in the 1990’s

Snooker legend Steve Davis has admitted that he hated rival Stephen Hendry when the Scot started to dominate the sport in the 1990s.

In a revealing interview with Ronnie O’Sullivan, Davis said that he coped badly with Hendry’s emergence as the game’s leading player and “didn’t even want to acknowledge he existed”.

 

See more of Ronnie’s interview with Steve Davis in the next episode of the Ronnie O’Sullivan show, which airs this Saturday at 12.30pm on British Eurosport 2 HD.

The UK Championships are LIVE on British Eurosport 2 HD from 1pm on Saturday.

Steve Davis said his 16-15 loss to Hendry in the 1990 UK Championship final marked the moment he lost his status as snooker’s top dog, telling Ronnie:

“One minute I had all the sweets locked up in my own little sweet jar, the next minute they were spilled on the floor and Stephen had them all.

“For most of the 90’s I didn’t like him at all, hated him, hated the thought that he was better than me, I didn’t even want to acknowledge he existed. So the fact he beat me in that match look back, it was a big turning point. But that is your own personal problems, dealing with something like that.

“I think Stephen dealt with the likes of you (Ronnie) and John Higgins coming along than I did with him. He was quite philosophical about the fact that one day he wouldn’t be the best.

“Losing to Dennis Taylor (in the 1985 World Championship final) was a shock and it was awful, but I could get over it because I knew that I was better than him.

“Hendry played a stronger, more aggressive game that I had not grown up with and I didn’t know how to teach myself new tricks. My problem was ‘how do I cope with this new player playing this new aggressive game when all of my career I was able to wait for people to make mistakes?'”

https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com

Murphy Wins In Mulheim – And Makes 147

In Snooker News Shaun Murphy won the Kreative Dental Ruhr Open in Germany, making a maximum break in a 4-0 victory over Robert Milkins in the final.Murphy made it back-to-back European Tour titles having won last month’s Bulgarian Open and the world number seven has now won four titles in 2014.

The highlight of his emphatic final win over Milkins in Mulheim came in the second frame as he potted 15 reds with blacks and cleared the colour to score the 108th maximum break in snooker history. It was the fourth 147 of Murphy’s career and third of 2014. He becomes the first player to make three maximums in a calendar year, having made one at the Championship League in January and another at the Gdynia Open in February.

Amazingly, Murphy had missed two golden chances of 147s earlier in the day, getting as far as the colours both times but missing the blue in his last 16 match against Joe Swail and the green in his quarter-final against Mark Williams.

Manchester-based 32-year Murphy collected 25,000 Euros for winning the tournament, plus a £1,000 bonus for the maximum. He also compiled breaks of 66, 62 and 58 in a one-sided final against Gloucester’s Milkins, who had hoped to win a tournament carrying ranking points for the first time in his 19-year career.

Former World Snooker Champion Murphy, who goes into next week’s Coral UK Championship in peak form, said: “I had four or five chances at maximums before the final. When I got the chance tonight I was under so much pressure. I potted a very difficult 15th black and finished perfect on the yellow, then I was just concentrating on every ball.

“When I started working with my coach Chris Henry we focussed on making 147s because top players make them all the time but I wasn’t doing that. Now the work I’ve done is coming through.

“I had a few barren years where I started to lose a bit of faith in my game. I was looking for answers elsewhere and I even thought about jacking it in. I’m really pleased that I stuck with it and got through that bad patch, and I’m so happy to have won another trophy.

“We all came here to prepare for the UK Championship and I can’t wait to get stuck in next week.”Earlier in the semi-finals, Murphy came from 3-0 down to beat Judd Trump 4-3 while Milkins saw off Stephen Maguire 4-1.

The 2014/15 European Tour series comprises six events across the continent, with the top 24 in the final Order or Merit to go through to the Players Championship next March to battle for the £100,000 jackpot.

The next event is the Lisbon Open in Portugal from December 11 to 14 and more Snooker News is upcoming.

 Results (last 16 onwards):

Last 16

Rod Lawler 4-3 Stuart Carrington

Robert Milkins 4-2 Andrew Higginson

Neil Robertson 4-3 Liang Wenbo

Stephen Maguire 4-1 Stuart Bingham

Judd Trump 4-3 Marco Fu

Chris Wakelin 4-2 Fergal O’Brien

Mark Williams 4-3 Mark King

Shaun Murphy 4-3 Joe Swail

 

 Quarter-finals

Milkins 4-3 Lawler

Maguire 4-2 Robertson

Trump 4-1 Wakelin

Murphy 4-2 Williams

 Semi-finals

Milkins 4-1 Maguire

Murphy 4-3 Trump

 Final

Murphy 4-0 Milkins

 

Date: Sunday November 23, 2014 Contact: Ivan Hirschowitz, World Snooker media office, 07766 656133

 

 

Indian hopes Pankaj Advani and Vidya Pillai won their respective opening league matches as the Seaways-IBSF World Snooker Championship commenced here Wednesday.

Advani, holder of 12 World titles, was kept at the table for longer than expected before he pulled through 4-2 against Malaysia’s Keen Hoo Moh while national champion Pillai shrugged off a scratchy start to blank Russian challenger Anastasjia Singurindi 3-0 with a break of 49 in the third frame.

The 29-year-old Advani, champion in 2003 and runner-up in 2010, jumped to a 2-0 lead with breaks of 60 and 85, but lost focus to allow the Malaysian catch up at 2-2 before taking the next two frames to win the match.

“I started well, but I think I lost a bit of focus when leading 2-0. Keen is a tactical player and it was a tough match. I should have won 4-1, but will take the 4-2 result.

“I am happy to get the first match out of the way and yes, it was in a way good to spend more time at the table, but it was a wake-up call for me. I need to improve on my safety play which I was not happy with today,” said Advani after playing his first competitive snooker match in five months.

Pillai, twice bronze medallist in this tournament, was never really troubled by her young Russian opponent who appeared all at sea for the best part of the match, but the Indian champion took a while to settle down as she missed some sitters while looking ill at ease.

The 36-year-old Pillai, however, struck some rhythm in the third frame when she posted a break of 49 that ended when she missed a centre-pocket pink, but the run was enough to win her the frame and match.

“I was not too happy with my performance, even granting it was my first match. It will take a couple of more matches to get used to the conditions, but anyway, it’s a relief to win the first match and I hope to improve as the tournament progresses,” said Pillai.

Elsewhere, China’s 14-year-old prodigy Yan Bingtao eased past Jim Johansson of Sweden 4-1 to start his campaign in the Men’s section in fine fashion.

Though the teenager did not dish out big breaks, he gave a glimpse of his talent and potential that suggested he would go far in this tournament.

With Coaching In cue sports remaining still is very important. If you can the lower you can get down the better but if not you need to remain in the same position during the shot.
This means not moving your head, body and legs until you have completed your follow through and the cue action is completed. Keep your feet still and planted on the ground like the are glued to the ground and you’ll notice you may have been moving before.

So do you finish your stroke into your chest or are you cueing around it?

For snooker a very high degree finish the stroke into their chest area and you can also pull the cue back along it to make sure your coming back correct and following through.

If you can cue around your chest that means your stance is most probably in the wrong spot and this would also allow you to drop your shoulder and elbow. There are times some players set up for this in snooker Ronnie O’Sullivan drops his elbow on power shots and in Pool you do it for the break shot which allows the cue the follow through a much great length.

You should be locked in on three point your chest, chin and bridge.

Check out the third clip on how to open a pack using the cue ball to bounce and gain speed. Very useful when you need to create a angle and keep the break going.