Snooker: Welshman wins at Thailand Masters
Friday, 7 January 2000 11:22The highest break of Marco Fu's meteoric pro-career failed to prevent Asia's leading player to avoid a potentially expensive defeat at Newport. Fu, fighting hard to break into snooker's elite top 16 next season, was surprisingly beaten 5-4 by Welshman James Reynolds in the second round of qualifying in the £270,000 Thailand Masters. After building a 3-1 lead at the mid-session interval, Fu then fell behind 4-3 before producing a 143 total clearance in the eighth frame to carry the match to it's full distance. It was the highest break of the event so far and it also eclipsed the previous personal best of the 21-year-old from Hong Kong, a 141 during the 1998 Irish Open.
But Reynolds, ranked in the world at number 145 refused to be intimidated and took a tense decider to set up a meeting with Northern Ireland's Jason Prince in round three. Earlier Willie Thorne and Joe Johnson stuck a double blow for the sport's older generation by each recording victories. Johnson, 47, reached the last 64 of the world ranking event with a 5-4 victory over Tony Jones while Thorne, 45, followed up his first-round win over Eddie Manning by beating Rod Lawler 5-3. It was a vintage performance from Thorne, who pulled away from a 3-3 deadlock by constructing breaks of 63 and 100 in his closing two frames. Thorne, now only three wins away from securing a trip to the Bangkok hosted final stages of the £270,000 tournament in March, advances to meet Preston's Stuart Prettman. Johnson, the 1986 world champion and the oldest player to retain his place in the top 64 on the world ranking list, recovered from a 4-2 deficit to Ed Jones.
