SNOOKER/World Championship:John Higgins, the 1998 world champion but with only one semi-final to show for his efforts on the circuit this season, completed a 10-4 first-round victory over Michael Holt, the margin owing less to any excellence of his own than to the world number 21's inability to deal with frustration .
Holt led 2-0 and had enough chances to build a 6-2 lead, as he well knew. Instead Higgins ended their opening session with a break of 104 to lead 6-3 and dropped only one further frame yesterday. "I was demoralised after yesterday. I knew my chance had gone," said Holt. "I've tried to work on the mental side of my game for seven years but nothing seems to change. I can't accept it when things go wrong. I sit there and feel so annoyed."
At least he did not concede a frame he was still mathematically able to win, as he impulsively has in the past, nor smash his hand on the cushion rail so violently, as he once did, that he broke a knuckle and ended up in Derby General Hospital.
Higgins was quick to agree that Holt is his own worst enemy: "He's a lovely guy but he does tend to throw the towel in." As for Higgins, his performance was nothing special by title-winning standards but, as Holt remarked, "he could improve".
In the first of the best-of-25-frames second-round matches, spread over three sessions, Shaun Murphy, champion here two years ago, was quickly 4-0 up on John Parrott, only for the 1991 champion to restrict him to a 5-3 overnight lead.
For four frames Murphy fed off the 42-year-old's mistakes, notably with breaks of 55, 65 and 100, but the intermission appeared to allow Parrott to clear his mind.
On the resumption he clinched a predominantly tactical frame with a run of 38 and gathered momentum in dominating the next two with 74, 34 and 49.
Guardian Service
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