The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Four-times Crucible champion Higgins sees off Day challenge
Four-times world champion Higgins eases into second round at Sheffield
Four-time champion John Higgins eased into the second round of the Betfred World Championship yesterday with a comprehensive 10-3 victory over qualifier Ryan Day.
The Crucible has already seen four former champions bow out in the first round, with Graeme Dott, Stuart Bingham, Peter Ebdon and Shaun Murphy all leaving Sheffield early, but there was never any danger of the Scot joining that list.
The damage was all done on Monday morning as Higgins plundered three century breaks to take a 7-2 lead.
The 40-year-old Scot lost the opening frame at the resumption yesterday afternoon but won the next three frames to get the job done, knocking in a magnificent break of 121 to clinch the match.
“At 6-3 you still have a game but at 7-2 you’re well in control but you can start to lose that, as we saw earlier a little bit with Mark Selby. It can go tight. There’s no easy matches, they’re all tough,” Higgins told BBC2.
Higgins has not gone past the second round at the Crucible since last lifting the trophy in 2011 but he feels his major ranking event wins this season in Australia and China might help him to reach the latter stages of the World Championship once again.
He said: “I think that only comes with winning things and those three tournaments have given me that belief again that I can compete with the best players.
“I’m sure if I can produce my best game I can be a match for them but it’s doing it on the big stage and we’ll see what happens in the next game.”
Higgins will face Ricky Walden in the second round later this week.
Mark Allen meanwhile holds a 6-3 lead over Mitchell Mann following the conclusion of their opening first-round session.
It was 2-2 at the mid-session break but Allen – last month’s Players Championship winner – emerged from the interval with breaks of 104, 85 and 78 to help him establish a 6-2 advantage.
But world No 74 Mann, the only rookie at this year’s tournament, kept himself in the match by snatching a scrappy last frame of the session on the pink.