Ronnie O'Sullivan scraped into the quarter-finals of the £535,000 British Masters at Wembley last night with a 6-5 win over Alain Robidoux.
O'Sullivan committed a sequence of costly unforced errors and admitted: "I was abysmal. I was fortunate to win but I knew, with the greatest respect, that Alain isn't the best player in the game under pressure." Because Robidoux's season has been ruined by cue problems and had lost his previous six matches, O'Sullivan was installed as hot favourite to progress. In addition O'Sullivan had also prevailed in his six career meetings with the French Canadian. However, for long periods the form book looked likely to be shredded before O'Sullivan came good at the business end of the match.
When O'Sullivan led 3-1 thanks to a last red to black clearance in frame four, the comfortable victory which had been widely anticipated looked certain to materialise.
That was again the over riding impression when the 1995 Masters champion erased a 40 point deficit in the sixth with an excellent 86 clearance to build a 4-2 advantage.
But Robidoux, at last feeling more at ease with a replacement cue after his original was damaged beyond repair during the summer, then proved hard to shake off.
He stole frame seven with a 51 clearance and drew level at 4-4 with a 126 break - his first century of the 1997-98 campaign - when O'Sullivan recklessly smashed the pack of reds wide open with the yellow.
By now O'Sullivan was decidedly ragged and when he missed a routine pink to a middle pocket in frame nine, Robidoux pounced with a run of 40 before moving 54 ahead by slamming home the yellow from distance.
Lady Luck then conspired against Robidoux as O'Sullivan outrageously fluked a red to embark on the otherwise flawless 124 clearance which enabled him to tie the scores at 5-5. And O'Sullivan completed his escape by coming through in a low scoring, scrappy decider on the green.
In yesterday's other matches, Mark Williams, the Welsh lefthander, showed a vast improvement on recent form when recording a 6-4 win over 1994 champion Alan McManus. Williams will now meet the winner of tomorrow's game between John Higgins and Anthony Hamilton in the quarter-finals.
Darren Morgan, meanwhile, beat Andy Hicks 5-4 in a high quality match and will face Steve Davis.
