Players Championship snooker 2021: Mark Selby beats Mark Williams, John Higgins beats Jordan Brown
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Updated 24/02/2021 at 22:57 GMT
Mark Selby overcame a tough test against Mark Williams to win 6-4 at the Players Championship. He will face John Higgins in the quarter-finals after the Scot won 6-0 against Welsh Open champion Jordan Brown. Higgins made three successive centuries to start the match. Barry Hawkins beat Stuart Bingham in the first quarter-final on Wednesday.
Mark Selby
Image credit: Eurosport
Mark Selby won the final three frames to beat Mark Williams in a hard-fought contest and reach the quarter-finals of the Players Championship.
Both players led in a back-and-forth match that featured seven half-century breaks, but Selby finished strongly to win 6-4.
He will face John Higgins in the next round after he thrashed Welsh Open champion Jordan Brown 6-0.
Williams made a rapid start, racing into a 2-0 lead with breaks of 75 and 69 respectively, but Selby recovered well, levelling the match at 2-2 heading into the interval, having fallen two points short of a century break in the third frame.
Selby’s continued his momentum in the fifth frame with a break of 66 to go ahead for the first time in the match.
But Williams replied to make it 3-3 and then won a lengthy seventh frame to take the lead.
Again Selby came back, though, as breaks of 78 and 73 helped him move 5-4 ahead.
The world No 4 then clinched his place in the next round with a break of 64 in the 10th frame.
Higgins was in superb form as he whitewashed Brown, who beat Ronnie O’Sullivan in the Welsh Open final on Sunday.
The world No 6 reeled off three successive century breaks to start the match – 122, 133, 121 – and then a 57 to move 4-0 ahead.
Brown almost got on the board in the fifth frame but Higgins took it 62-58 and then finished with another half-century break of 53.
Barry Hawkins reached the semi-finals with a 6-2 win over Stuart Bingham.
The two players traded the opening four frames of the match, with Hawkins taking the final frame of the session to level at 2-2.
Hawkins had gone 54 minutes without potting a ball but a break of 80 earned him the fourth frame.
He then reeled off four frames in a row, including half-century breaks (54 and 70), to book his place in the last four.
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