Martin O’Donnell ended World Champion Luca Brecel’s chances of qualifying for the World Grand Prix and enhanced his own, with a 4-2 win over the Belgian at the BetVictor Scottish Open in Edinburgh.
Both players came into the game knowing that the winner would push themselves into position to earn a place at the World Grand Prix, whilst the loser would be out of the race. Only the top 32 players of the season so far will qualify for the Leicester event and Crucible king Brecel is now destined to finish outside of that bracket.
O’Donnell scored an excellent win over Mark Selby on a run to the quarter-finals of the BetVictor English Open earlier this season and he’s earned an equally impressive result in the Scottish capital this week.
Brecel took the opener this evening, before breaks of 59, 75 and 70 from O’Donnell saw him establish a 3-1 lead. A 44-minute fifth went the way of Brecel to keep him in contention, but O’Donnell crafted a fine run of 85 to get over the line and seal an an important win.
“It feels great. Out there playing the World Champion on the main stage and to score like I did was great. It felt really nice,” said world number 80 O’Donnell.
“I had a really good win on the main table against Mark Selby at the English Open and that helped me out there today. That experience of beating someone of that stature, a multiple World Champion. I played well that day. It gives you the belief that you can do it again and thankfully I did today.”
Matthew Selt prevailed in a 76-minute deciding frame to conquer four-time World Champion Selby 4-3 and earn his place in the last 16.
It’s the first time that Selt has beaten Selby in a ranking event and earns him a clash with Thailand’s Noppon Saengkham in the next round. The marathon final frame this evening came all the way down to the colours, where Selby crucially spurned a brown. Selt potted from brown to pink to earn a big victory.
Selt said: “It’s a fantastic result for me and a big scalp. I’ve never beaten Mark before in a ranking event and the pressure got the best of me in the decider. I thought I played really well up until that. I had a couple of chances and started to freeze a bit because of my record against him. I counted myself very lucky in the end, but I potted some good balls and I’d like to think I was the worthy winner.”
Kyren Wilson put on a sensational performance to defeat former Welsh Open winner Jordan Brown 4-0 in just 45 minutes.
Such was the dominance of Wilson, his opponent only accrued three minutes and 41 seconds of table time throughout the whole match. Wilson fired in breaks of 126, 74, 129 and 106 on his way to the win. He now plays David Gilbert.
Scotland’s John Higgins defeated Ricky Walden 4-3 with the clock at 12.45am, while Tom Ford scored a late night 4-3 win against Ding Junhui.
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