In the early morning of April 23, Beijing time, the 2024 World Snooker Championship continued. In a highlight-reel match in the first round, former Rookie of the Year winner Pang Junxu took on Welsh Open champion Robert Milkins. In the first three games, Pang Junxu made a perfect start of 3-0.
After a season of competition, the 2023-24 Snooker Tour has entered the final stage, and the Snooker World Championship Qualifying Tournament is hotly staged. In this year's World Championships, a total of 5 Chinese players including Ding Junhui played, and the first National Championships champions Zhang Anda and Lv Haotian were eliminated 4-10 and 5-10 successively.
World No. 27 Pang Junxu won his first chance to compete in the main draw of the World Championships last year, losing 7-10 to seven-time world champion Ronnie "The Rocket" O'Sullivan in the first round, but despite this, his performance was unanimously recognized. This year, he once again won the qualifying round to get a chance to participate in the main event of the World Championships.
Regarding the performance of the two, the official Weibo of the World Snooker Tour wrote: "In the twelfth game, the two sides changed hands repeatedly, Pang Junxu seized the opportunity to equalize the score, and then both sides won two games each, and drew again 8-8. In the seventeenth game, Pang Junxu reversed Cao Yupeng to get the match point when the opponent took the lead in scoring 53 points. ”
The official Weibo of the World Snooker Tour continued to write: "In the match point game, Cao Yupeng made a mistake. In the end, Pang Junxu defeated Cao Yupeng 10-8 and advanced to Crucible.
After the draw, Pang Junxu faced Welsh Open champion Robert Milkins in the first round of the World Championships. Zhang Anda and Lu Haotian, who played before, fell behind 0-2 in the first two games of the first round and finally lost out. The match between Pang Junxu and Milkins started perfectly, and he won a 3-0 lead in the first three games.