On the one hand, you have Judd Trump claiming there is ‘no real atmosphere’ in the first round of the UK Championship, where ‘until the TV kicks in, it doesn’t really feel like a tournament’ and Ronnie O’Sullivan treating his first match as an exhibition rather than anything else, while continuing his hatred of playing snooker in favour of punditry.
On the other hand, you have Ronnie finishing off his match in 56 minutes in spectacular style; McManus battling from 5-0 to win the decider against Michael Wild 6-5; a former World Champion getting whitewashed (Noppon Saengkham beat Ken Doherty 6-0); Mark King forgetting his cue; and lastly two Top 16 players getting knocked out, one of whom against an amateur (Kyren Wilson and Neil Robertson the defending UK Champion against Peter Lines respectively).
This is the hysteria Barry wanted.
Out of 64 ties, 18 of them were won by the lower seed, the lowest being amateur Peter Lines, No. 114 Mitchell Mann, and No.104 Michael Georgiou. The most important area of the draw now is at the top, where all seeds (Robertson, Burden, Un-Nooh and Ebdon) lost, giving their opponents (Lines, Wakelin, Highfield and Wang) perfect opportunities to win big money by playing against each other.
Other than that, most of the top seeds got through their matches comfortably, though Ding and Murphy had to come from behind to avoid an upset. Kudos also goes to Hammad Miah and Rhys Clark, who came from behind 3-0 and 4-1 down to win their matches.
Anywho, predictions again (IN BOLD OF COURSE)! The last 32 will be in more depth.
P Lines vs. Wakelin
Highfield vs. Wang
M Williams vs. Higginson
Donaldson vs. Walden
Stevens vs. White
Xiao vs. Perry
Dunn vs. Georgiou
Clark vs. R O’Sullivan
Ding vs. Muir
McManus vs. J Jones
Carter vs. R Williams
Gilbert vs. Joyce
Mei vs. Gould
McLeod vs. Fu
J Robertson vs. Davis
O Lines vs. Trump
Bingham vs. Yu
Brecel vs. Craigie
Hawkins vs. O’Brien
Maguire vs. Zhao
Zhou vs. Holt
Yan vs. Liang
Dale vs. Dott
Hull vs. Murphy
Higgins vs. Saengkham
Woollaston vs. Davison
Allen vs. Lawler
Day vs. Maflin
Anda vs. McGill
Baird vs. Mann
Miah vs. Milkins
Wells vs. Selby
