A shock, second round departure by reigning world champion John Higgins in the Irish Snooker Open yesterday brought a cautious reaction from prospective benefactor Ken Doherty. "There are still some great players in the field," said the Dubliner at the National Basketball Arena, Tallaght.
Top of the list from Doherty's standpoint is Mark Williams, his quarter-final opponent at 2.0 this afternoon. Yet the defeat of Higgins by world number four Stephen Lee has greatly enhanced the Dubliner's prospects of emerging from the top half of the draw.
Typically direct, Doherty admitted: "The title's there for the taking but it would be wrong for me to read too much into John's defeat. In fact I'm not looking any further than my match with Williams at this stage."
Higgins' departure was clearly a shock in the context of his status as the reigning world and UK champion, but not on current form. He lost the opening matches of his last two tournaments, the Malta Grand Prix, in which fell to part-time professional Alex Borg, and last week's German Masters, in which he was beaten by the eventual winner, John Parrott.
Another key element in this latest set-back is that he was confronted by the rapidly improving Stephen Lee, who has risen from ninth to fourth in the world rankings this season. Winner of the Grand Prix in October, Lee came from 2-1 down to level with a best-of-the-match break of 94 in the fourth frame.
He then increased the pressure on Higgins by winning a scrappy fifth frame, and stretched his advantage with modest but effective breaks of 25 and 29 in the next. We then witnessed the full measure of Lee's burgeoning talent.
Most opponents would have been rocked by having the world champion strike back with a clearance of 88. But Lee's nerve never wavered. Building on an opening break of 41 in the eighth, he went on to wrap up the frame in little more than 16 minutes for a match victory in two hours 22 minutes.
It was his first win over Higgins in six attempts, but he took an admirably mature view of the outcome.
"Every time I played John in the past, he hardly seemed to make a mistake," said Lee. "So I was obviously surprised to have got so many chances this time." He meets Parrott, 5-4 conqueror of Matthew Couch, in the quarter-finals at 7.0 tonight.
Doherty also went into action at 2.0 p.m. in front of a crowd considerably smaller than had watched his first round win over Gerard Green the previous night. But the Dubliner was clearly more comfortable with his game.
Facing world 47-ranked Bradley Jones, who had produced the outstanding play of the first round with back-to-back centuries, Doherty could not have wished for a better start. Adapting instantly to a fast table, his opening break of 109 was the product of some delightful positional play.
Equally important, however, was Doherty's ability to scramble a winning total in the third frame to take a 2-1 lead. And he went on to win the next with breaks of 45 and 32, making the eventual outcome largely predictable, even at that stage. And lingering doubts were emphatically removed by a winning break of 79 in the fifth for a 4-1 lead.
In terms of quality scoring, however, Doherty's supporters would have been somewhat disturbed by the performance of Williams in a crushing, 5-0 defeat of Graeme Dott. It wasn't a particularly notable achievement to beat the current world number 34 by such a margin, but a break of 139 by Williams in the fourth frame was comfortably the highest of the tournament so far.
Doherty and Williams have met on seven occasions with the count 43 in the Dubliner's favour. More significantly, Doherty won their last two clashes, by 6-2 in the semi-finals in Malta two weeks ago and by 1714 in the semi-finals of the World Championship at The Crucible last May. "I was a lot more relaxed today than in my opening match but I'm still not playing as well as I would like," added Doherty. "But I know the crowd will lift me when I need to step up a few gears at the tournament progresses."
