Andrew Higginson ready for Shaun Murphy clash at Bendigo Stadium: 2011 Australian Goldfields Open
As the first major event of 2011 Australian Goldfields Open draws nearer, all professional players are getting ready to spark their cues at the Bendigo Stadium in Victoria. Andrew Higginson is also
practicing hard in his snooker club for his first round clash against Shaun Murphy. Soon he will be flying to City of Greater Bendigo to participate in the tournament.
Approximately a week ago, the qualifiers of the tournament ended at World Snooker Academy in Sheffield where Higginson defeated Jamie Burnett 5-4 in fourth round of qualification. Facing Murphy in
the first round of 2011 Australian Goldfields Open will be a real test of his snooker skills.
While speaking to a snooker website about his qualifier experience, Higginson said, “I had some good practice and felt relaxed going into the Australian Goldfields Open qualifiers. I'm flying next
Thursday, arriving on the Saturday morning and playing Shaun Murphy on Monday 18th.”
The 2010-11 Snooker Season was not up to the mark for Higginson. He faced many first round exits in major ranking events. However, he did reach to a couple of events’ advanced stages like Players
Tour Championship (PTC) and Championship League Snooker but that didn’t do well to improve his ranking at least.
Meanwhile, the start of 2011-12 Snooker Season has been more convincing for him, as he has given a couple of encouraging performances. He surged into Round 2 of PTC Event 1 where he crashed out at
the hands of Stephen Lee 4-1 but he made it to the televised stages of the Australian snooker tournament and he is delighted about that.
He told the website, “Having qualified for Australia I'm buzzing. As a 15-year-old I dreamed of travelling the world to play snooker, and I've done that to some extent having been to Malta and China.
It's taken a lot of hard work to get where I am but I still appreciate it.”
Both Higginson and Murphy have already played each other a couple of times before in 2009 World Snooker Championship and Euro PTC Event 1 in 2010, and in both encounters, Murphy was victorious.
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