Ronnie O’Sullivan’s quest for a fourth world title got off to a superb start this afternoon as he carved out a 7-2 lead over Liang Wenbo in their 1st round match at the Betfred.com world championship.
O’Sullivan won the opener in just 15 minutes, but Wenbo soon levelled at 1-1 with breaks of 34 and 32.
The next two frames saw back-to-back centuries of 100 and 108 from O’Sullivan which put the Essex man 3-1 in front at the mid-session interval. Wenbo managed to pull within one again after edging a 25 minute frame, but from there on O’Sullivan dominated.
A break of 54 in frame six soon made it 4-2 and then O’Sullivan cleared from brown to black in frame seven to increase his lead to 5-2 after Wenbo had let slip a couple of good opportunities. Things got even worse for the Chinese player as the Rocket fired in a measured 86 break in frame eight.
In the final frame of the session, O’Sullivan appeared well set on a maximum attempt after potting seven reds with blacks, before missing the eighth red with the rest. Wenbo was unable to punish his error though and O’Sullivan knocked in another contribution of 39 to complete his afternoon’s work.
The match will resume at 2.30pm tomorrow afternoon with the winner facing either Mark Williams or Marcus Campbell in the second round.
