John Higgins beats Matthew Stevens to advance in Welsh Open
The defending champion John Higgins claimed the semi-final spot against Ali Carter when he beat Matthew Stevens 5-3 in the last-eight yesterday at the Newport Centre. He crashed the Welshman’s hopes when he defeated former Masters, UK champion and world
champion finalist Stevens.
The semi-final match is likely to be a close-encounter as Higgins snatched the Welsh Open crown from Carter last year, as he is looking forward to capitalise on this fact again. Carter beat China’s Ding Junhui 5-2 in the quarter-final yesterday.
The Scotsman, also called the Wizard of Wishaw, has been struggling since he was banned from international snooker and after the death of his father. Every tussle for the defending champion in the tournament has been emotional from the very first match against
the young Jack Lisowski.
Stevens started off brilliantly, winning the first frame 21-70 with a straight 77 break to lead 1-0, but the Scot conquered the second frame 80-0. Stevens missed a pink in third and gave Higgins a chance to take the frame 79-38 and gained a 2-1 lead. It
was all Higgins in the 4th frame, as he led 3-1 when he fired the fifth highest break of the tournament, a 132 and clinched it in one visit.
Stevens tussled back and gave a brilliant 93 break to clinch the fifth frame 32-93 and took the game to 3-2. The match score was level at 3-3 when Stevens hit a half-century break of 58 snatching the scrappy 6th frame 29-67 from Higgins. The world
number one was just about to fetch the next frame as he was leading 64-4, but he missed a shot to give Stevens a chance to steal it. Stevens struck well with some good long-range potting, but that all went down as he missed a straightforward cut to the table
corner and missed the frame giving Higgins a 4-3 lead.
The home favourite Welsh had a great opportunity to level terms and force a decider, as he was leading the frame 30-53, but a long red missed and Higgins, with a tremendous 39 clearance, made sure his contender would not hope for a semi-final spot. Higgins
won the last frame 69-53 and surged into the semi-final stage.
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