Scotland’s Graeme Dott surges into quarter-final after beating Ali Carter in round 1 of 2012 Masters
Scotland’s Graeme Dott has successfully made his way into the quarter-final stage of 2012 Masters snooker event after beating England’s Ali Carter by the score line of 6-3 in Round 1. The Scotsman played a safety game to claim victory while Carter was unsettled
by his opponent completely during the match at Alexandra Palace in Stock.
Dott was tussling at the baize in the first five frames as Carter did not let him score any huge breaks and lead the match. Dott was trailing behind Carter by 2-3 when he came back strongly and clinched four consecutive frames to finally win the match. The
Scotsman fired some impressive knocks of 61, 71 and 56 along with some small breaks to win his first-round match.
The overall frame scores of the match were 37-86 (C 56), 79-29, 52-64, 79-8 (D 61), 59-69, 71-33 (D 71), 60-40, 86-0 (D 56) and 66-23. During his run in the match, Dott played more safety shots to hold Carter back in the last four frames. Carter tried his
best to make his presence felt but he was not able to play up to the mark.
Speaking to World Snooker after winning his match, Dott said, “The main thing is to win and that's something I don't do too often at the Masters. It was a bit of a slog but my safety was pretty good. It was more a tactical game than anything else and my
positional play was awful. That's the only thing I could be annoyed about.”
The former World Snooker Champion added, “I was getting a lot of 50 breaks and I should have been able to kick the balls in, the balls were that nice. But I ended up making it hard. I had to pull out good pots when it just should have been easy, but that's
just the way I play sometimes.”
The Scotsman has now made his way into the quarter-final stage where he will be facing reigning World Snooker Champion, compatriot John Higgins. Dott has played against Higgins before and feels his quarter-final will be quite exciting.
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