Hawkins confident for next year

Snooker

Barry Hawkins is approaching 2017 with added confidence – despite his last-16 defeat at the Coral Scottish Open. Hawkins, from Ditton, lost a final-frame decider to Liang Wenbo at the Emirates Arena last week but with the second of snooker’s triple crown events, the Dafabet Masters, starting on January 15, he goes into the new year on the back of some decent form. Hawkins has been Mr Consistent in recent weeks, reaching the Coral Northern Ireland Open final in November and the last four at the English Open before that. He said: “It’s been a good end to the season. I’ve had a decent run in all the Home Nations events – it’s just a shame I wasn’t able to play like that against Liang. But it’s not worth worrying about, I’ve played some good stuff and that’s the most important thing. “My focus now goes on my family and I’ve lost playing a lot worse than that so I can’t grumble. “I’d played well in the week leading up to the game too, so it would have been nice to take that forward but you can’t be on top form all the time.” Hawkins was punished for a slow start against English Open champion Liang and fell 2- 0 behind. Breaks of 81 and 82 saw the world No.10 soar back into consistency and he took the match to a deciding frame. Both players traded missed reds but some loose safety play proved costly for Hawkins, Liang stringing some pots together when it mattered most. “That was hard, I struggled early on and it took a while to get going,” Hawkins added. “I wasn’t landing on things nicely, wasn’t able to get any momentum and it was a scrappy way to finish off the match. “It’s hard to work out what went wrong. Perhaps I wasn’t as focused as normal and I missed a couple of easy balls. I was pleased with the way I bounced back, I just couldn’t take that all the way.” The Scottish Open was live on Eurosport 1 and Quest and featured daily studio analysis from Ronnie O’Sullivan, Jimmy White and Neal Foulds. Olympic skeleton champion Lizzy Yarnold took silver in the second race of the World Cup season at Lake Placid last Saturday. The 28-year-old former Maidstone Grammar School for Girls pupil was in contention for gold after the first heat. But a skid through the chicane meant her second heat was 0.7sec slower and she finished behind double European champion Janine Flock of Austria. Yarnold leads the World Cup standings by eight points from Jacqueline Loelling of Germany. She returned to racing at the start of this month after an 18-month break having won World Championship gold in March 2015.