World Champion, John Higgins too tough for England’s Rory McLeod: 2011 UK Championship
Top dogs have gathered at the York Barbican Centre to take part in the 27th edition of World Snooker’s second most prestigious event in the calendar, 2011 UK Championship, which will commence from December 3. The line up for the event has been
finalised already, where the defending champion, Scotland’s John Higgins, will inaugurate the championship playing against England’s Rory McLeod in Round 1.
Both potters must be ready by now to clash in the first round of the event at the arena, but who is going to move ahead? This question must be bothering everyone who watches snooker and follows the sport enthusiastically. Both players are in good form, however,
none of them has won any major snooker event so far, except Higgins, who won a premier league event against Mark Williams.
Comparing the snooker skills of both players, one can see that Higgins can oust McLeod easily in the opening match but that is not the case with the betting odds. The odds are placed in favour of England’s McLeod. According to these betting odds, McLeod
has a 4:1 chance of winning against the defending champion.
McLeod is a Northamptonshire-based Black Muslim cueist, who has not won any major ranking title in his career. However, he has reached the quarter-final stage of 2011 World Snooker Championship and 2011 Australian Goldfields Open, but could not surge further.
The 40-year-old McLeod has shown a consistent performance in the 2011-12 snooker season. He has played in 31 matches up to now and has won 19 of them and lost in 12, without any walkover. The match winning percentage of the Englishman is 61.3 percent, while
his frame winning tendency is 55.5 percent after 106 frame wins out of 191.
Most of his victories are either in first rounds of minor ranking events or qualifying matches of major tournaments. Besides Players Tour Championships (PTC) and Premier League Snooker (PLS), McLeod has played qualifying events of 2011 Australian Goldfields
Open, Shanghai Masters, UK Championship and the German Masters.
The Wellingborough potter reached the first round of 2011 UK Championship after ousting Adam Duffy 6-4 and Barry Hawkins 6-2 in the qualifying session. The English cueman is ready to face Higgins in his opening match.
He spoke to the media about his opponent and said, “I have met him before haven’t I? Maybe they can mess up the draw, maybe they have done it wrong! I’ve played him before, I know what I have got to do. I just hope that I will do the right thing at the right
time.”
The current season has not been a huge success for John Higgins either, as he could neither win any major event nor many small ones except for a premier league event. Despite that, the defending champion is still superb and his overall performance is quite
better that that of McLeod.
As compared to McLeod’s recent performance in the 2011-12 snooker season, Higgins has a good track record with a 73 percent match winning rate after winning 27 matches out of the 37 played. His frame winning tendency is also ahead of McLeod with a 62.1 percentage.
The Wizard of Wishaw is known for his ability to hit back into the game from nowhere and sweep the table in no time. He displayed this specialty of his in the 2011 World Snooker Championship final against youngster, Judd Trump, and took the title.
Head-to-Head
Regardless of what the odds say, Higgins is still one of the toughest opponents for McLeod. Both players have already played against each other in the quarter-final of 2011 World Snooker Championship, where Higgins defeated McLeod easily by 13-7, after bouncing
back from 0-2 down.
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