With every player being required to enter the China Open through the qualification round, there was great potential for some surprise results in Beijing at the start of the week. Marco Fu, Barry Hawkins, Joe Perry and Liang Wenbo were on the wrong end of such scorelines, but numerous big names progressed to the second round.
Qualification proves a challenging hurdle
Number 7 seed Fu was stunned in qualification by Daniel Wells, losing 5-3 with the young Welshman top scoring in the opening set of matches with a break of 137. Fellow top ten star Barry Hawkins was also sent packing after he lost 5-2 to Aditya Mehta who is ranked 83 places below the form player of 2017.
Yet they were not the only players surprised by lower ranked opponents in qualification. Luca Brecel continued a poor run of results as he lost 5-3 to amateur Andy Hicks, whilst recent ranking event winner Anthony Hamilton suffered the same outcome against Ashley Hugill.
The Welsh trio of Jamie Jones, Ryan Day and Dominic Dale all came unstuck, as did fellow top 40 players Tom Ford and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. Jack Lisowski, Rod Lawler, Joe Swail, Robin Hull, David Grace, Chris Wakelin, Oliver Lines, Peter Ebdon, Sam Baird, Ken Doherty and Dechawat Poomjaeng ensured the list of surprise defeats was well populated.
Round one continues the trend
The first round proper witnessed more of the same with top ten seeds Liang Wenbo and Joe Perry dumped out by Rory McLeod and Hossein Vafaei Ayouri respectively.
Anthony McGill and David Gilbert have solid pedigrees in the top 20 but also lost to top 50 players Tian Pengfei and Andrew Higginson. Mark King also sits in the Premier League of snooker players but lost 5-4 on the final black to Sanderson Lam in an epic contest that literally went to the last ball.
There were further defeats for Ross Muir, Graeme Dott, Robert Milkins, Matthew Selt, Jimmy Robertson and Alan McManus as the unpredictability continued.
Favourites avoid banana skins
A number of big names cruised through to the second round, led by world number one Mark Selby who joined Ronnie O’Sullivan, Ding Junhui and Ali Carter in whitewashes of their opponents.
Mark Williams overcame a 140 break by Zhang Anda to win 5-1, a score repeated by top 20 stars Judd Trump, Martin Gould, John Higgins and Ricky Walden.
Shaun Murphy and Stuart Bingham also comfortably progressed as the last 32 was set up nicely from World Champion Selby down to 96th ranked Eden Sharav, who defeated fellow Scotsman Muir 5-0 in the first round.