'Rocket' reaches final four

Ronnie O'Sullivan set up an appetising semi-final against John Higgins and almost made a 147 in his ruthless demolition of Mark Allen at the totesport.com Welsh Open.

The Essex cueman won 5-2 and finished the match in a hurry by reeling off four frames in quick succession.

In the fifth frame of the match the 34-year-old looked certain to become the first man to reach 10 career maximums in professional events when he potted 15 reds and blacks and turned his attention to the colours.

But he missed a straightforward green and the break was halted at 122, with O'Sullivan clearly amused by the manner in which the exquisite break broke down.

O'Sullivan had fallen 1-0 and 2-1 behind in the early stages but he was mostly highly impressive and breaks of 92, 88, 90 and 50 on top of the century proved to be frame winners.

Allen, whose highest break was 54, could only watch and admire as O'Sullivan breezed through the frames and completed victory in an hour and eight minutes.

The Northern Irishman waved a handkerchief on the end of his cue in surrender as O'Sullivan wrapped up his terrific win.

Higgins had a top break of 89 in his 5-2 win over Masters champion Mark Selby.

World champion Higgins did not score as heavily as O'Sullivan but the Scot was never headed by Selby, tearing into a 3-0 lead and sealing his win with two scoring visits in the seventh frame.

Welshman Mark Williams was sent crashing out of his home tournament, beaten 5-1 by Scotland's Stephen Maguire in their quarter-final.

Maguire had runs of 65, 69, 88, 66 and 67 in his comprehensive victory, while former world champion Williams could not reproduce the impressive form he has showed since the start of the year and his highest break was 46.

Defending champion Ali Carter completed the semi-final line-up by ending the Newport crowd's hopes of seeing a Welsh champion on Sunday.

Ryan Day followed compatriot Williams in tumbling out of the tournament as Carter clinched a semi-final meeting with Maguire.

Carter surged into a 4-0 lead and, despite allowing Day to pull two frames back, was not to be caught. The Englishman posted a 5-2 win, with breaks of 69, 81 and 65 his biggest contributions.

Day was out of sorts and made just one break above 30, the run of 61 which allowed him to win the fifth frame.