The 2022 Snooker Masters begins in London on January 9, with Mark Williams beating defending champion China's Yan Bingtao 6-4 in the opener to face the winner between British Championship St. Xinke champion Zhao Xintong and four-time world champion Higgins in the quarterfinals in the early hours of Friday morning Beijing time.
Williams celebrated his 24th appearance at the Masters. In 1998, Williams won the black ball showdown against Hendry, winning the first of his two Masters titles.
Since the 2021/22 season, Mark Williams first defeated Gary Wilson in the final of the British Open to win the 24th ranking title of his career, and was forced to withdraw from the English Open due to covid-19 after reaching the round of 16 at the Northern Ireland Open in October. In last night's Masters debut, Williams appeared to be back at his best.
Yan Bingtao, 21, ended his journey to defend his title early. A year ago, in the Masters tournament held in Milton Keynes "behind doors", Yan Bingtao beat John Higgins 10-8 to lift the "Paul Hunt Trophy". In his debut at Alexander Palace, Yan Bingtao also scored a 2-0 start with 64 points and 71 points, with both sides winning the next two sets with a 50+ each, and Yan Bingtao led 3-1 into the second half.
In the 5th set, Williams was overscored by Yan Bingtao to snooker, Williams "one-handed" to remove the powder ball to chase the inning score, and then the "Welsh goal machine" successively played 62 points, 67 points, 64 points and 104 points, 5-3 to win and get the match point. Yan Bingtao contributed a wonderful 122 points in the following inning, but Williams rejected the arrival of the decider with a single 85 points in the 10th set to grab a place in the quarterfinals.
Williams said after the game: "This tournament is really too hard to win, especially with John Higgins, Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry. It was nice to be back in the arena and the atmosphere was great. I need to enjoy the environment more because I can't guarantee that I'll be back every year. ”
"I thought there was no place to beat the Wembley Convention Centre (the Masters from 1979 to 2006), but now I have to admit that it was our best venue. There is a large box at one end of the seat and a sofa seat at the other end, and the arena is very large, and it is difficult to create an atmosphere like this. ”
"The next game I want to play against John (Higgins). We've been on the tour for a long time, he's old, his hair is gray and thin, and so am I. The stadium will welcome an amazing audience, just like Crucible in 2018. ”
Yan Bingtao, who lost the battle, said: "We all played very well this afternoon. Mark was great today, scoring both the bench and the difficulty ball. I lost today but I'm happy because I played well and it was the best I've played this season. I enjoyed the game a lot, there were two thousand people watching it so it was very different from last year and there was a lot of pressure. ”