Matthew Stevens seized a 5 frames to 3 advantage over Ronnie O'Sullivan to put himself in the driving seat after the first session of their UK Championship quarter-final encounter in Bournemouth this afternoon. In the other quarter-final, Stephen Hendry opened up a similar lead over Dave Harold.
The seven-times world champion, who has been beaten by Harold on four occasions, levelled the match at two frames each, before making breaks of 72, 116, and 92, during an awesome scoring spell, before Harold captured the very last frame to put himself back in contention. That match is set to resume at 6.45pm.
Hendry had eased through his last-sixteen encounter by completing a 9-3 win over Paul Wykes last night. The World Number two recorded the seventh 147 break of his career on his way to victory. Joe Swail went down 9-4 to Matthew Stevens.
Latest: (Best of 17 frames)
M Stevens (Wales) 5-3 R O'Sullivan (England): 78-54 (67-53) 1-100 (62) 74-41 67-45(61) 0-76 (52) 103-13 (63) 2-67 66-56 (resumes on Thursday)
D Harold (England) 5-8 S Hendry (Scotland): 77-4 (77) 46-75 78-29 0-97 (96) 13-99 (72) 0-116 (116) 1-97 (92) 87-0 (87) 72-0 6-64 71-39 (70) 67-68 (51 Harold) 0-66
J Higgins (Scotland) 2-3 M Holt (England): 60-59 29-91 (85) 38-66 (58) 0-124(69, 54) 64-17 (64)
