O’Sullivan closes on Crucible semi-final but Yan fightback stalls Williams
Ronnie O’Sullivan built a commanding 11-5 lead over Stephen Maguire in their World Snooker Championship quarterfinal at the Crucible.
Resuming at 6-2 down from the morning session, the qualifier Maguire, himself twice a Crucible semi-finalist, took the opening two frames of the evening with successive half-century breaks to reduce the deficit.
O’Sullivan, who had made a 123 clearance during the morning session, then capitalised after Maguire missed what looked a routine red into the middle pocket to make a swift 64 which helped him move 7-4 ahead.
The six-time world champion reeled off another half-century run in the next to re-establish his four-frame lead at the mid-session interval. It remained one-way traffic as O’Sullivan pushed on through clearances of 55 and 69 before a missed pink denied him a century in the 14th.
Maguire eventually stopped the rot in the final frame with a 66 break – but faces an uphill struggle to prevent O’Sullivan from marching into the semi-finals for what would be a record 13th time when the match resumes on Wednesday morning.
On the other table Yan Bingtao fought back in the evening session of his showdown with the former champion Mark Williams. Yan, who defeated the defending champion Mark Selby in the last 16, dug in to overturn a 6-2 deficit, even edging 8-7 in front before Williams took the final frame to make it 8-8.
During the afternoon matches on Tuesday, Judd Trump and John Higgins came out on top in the opening sessions of their respective quarter-finals.
Trump, world champion three years ago, took a 5-3 lead over Stuart Bingham, whose own memorable Crucible triumph came in 2015. On the other table the four-times champion Higgins also built a 5-3 advantage over Jack Lisowski, who was back in action following his dramatic 13-12 win over Neil Robertson late on Monday evening.