John Higgins versus Stephen Lee: 2011 Betfred.com World Snooker Championships
The three-time world champion, John Higgins, who has been speculated by many other contestants to be the man to beat and dug deep, secured his place in the last-16 after a 10-5 victory over Stephen Lee.
The first round match between the Scottish Ace and the Englishman concluded on Thursday, April 21, 2011 in Sheffield, England, when Higgins returned to the game with an overnight lead of 6-3.
Higgins had returned to the Crucible Theatre after about 12 months, when he was under the controversy betting and match-fixing. Yet, The Wizard of Wishaw returned to the Crucible in a good shape, having won an overall five tournaments
and getting cleared from a recent six-month ban on a sport disrepute issue.
It was one of the highest scoring games of the tournament so far, as Higgins stood triumphant after compiling four centuries in the game. However, the triple world champion was not utterly delighted of his first round performance having
a nervy start.
"I didn't feel so good starting off, I was really, really edgy," Higgins admitted that he was far from happy with the kind of start of the 2011 world championship tournament. “I was lucky because Stephen let me off the hook a little
bit at the start of the match. I was delighted to be 6-3 up after the first session.”
Upon the cueist’s return to the table on Thursday, Lee was three-frames down and Higgins continued to dominate by winning two frames in quick successions, one of which included a brilliant century break of 124. But soon, Lee caught
his pace and rebounded with a century break of 101 with the second break of 48 to credit the next two frames to his name.
Even though with a 8-5 lead on the score-line, Higgins did not lose his confidence from the game and knocked off the next two frames halting Lee to five and conquered the first round match-up.
"There'll be people thinking I'm the man to beat, but there's a lot of players capable of winning this," the 35-year-old added after the match. "The standard is so high, if you look at my draw I'm going to have to do it the hard way."
He shall now be facing Rory McLeod of Wellingborough in the best-of-twenty-five second Round match due on Sunday. It would be the first time Higgins shall be up against the 40-year-old Englishman.
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