Maguire beats Higgins

The out-of-sorts Higgins never got going, coming off worst in a scrappy opening frame before Maguire clicked into gear, rattling in breaks of 74 and 89 to open up a three-frame lead.

After Maguire had compiled two delicate breaks to inch into a 63-1 lead in the fourth, fellow Scot Higgins, requiring snookers, battled on in the slim hope of wresting a frame back.

But he missed a simple black to make the task too difficult, and trudged off to the mid-session interval in frustration, having only scored 44 points in the first four frames.

The break did little to arrest Higgins’ slump, who made an early error and let Maguire amongst the balls once more. He compiled a masterful break of 52 on a tricky table before an unfortunate nudge on the red left him without a pot-able ball.

Higgins looked as if he had given himself just a chance of getting back into the frame by scoring 26, but hit a red too hard to let Maguire back in once again.

It sealed Higgins’ first whitewash defeat since he lost 5-0 to Karl Burrows in the 1996 Asian Classic.

Maguire's reward for victory is a quarter-final against Judd Trump, who overcame the challenge of Northern Ireland's Mark Allen 5-2.

"Wasn't at my best," Allen reflected on Twitter afterwards, "but you don't have to do much wrong against [Trump] at the minute. Hard to stop."

Beaten Masters finalist Shaun Murphy overcame Ricky Walden 5-2 to reach the last eight.

The in-form Murphy had hit a 128 en route to a 4-0 lead at the interval.

Walden responded valiantly, grabbing two straight frames as he tried to stage a comeback, but Murphy scratched his way to victory by reeling off the colours in a desperately scrappy final frame.

Murphy will play the winner of tomorrow's match between Mark Selby and Graeme Dott in the next round.

In the final match of the evening Stephen Lee defeated Yu Delu 5-2 in a determined performance, and now faces the victor of the contest between defending champion Mark Williams and Stuart Bingham.