Shanghai Masters Last 16

Well if the story of the first few days of the Shanghai Masters was one of tense close ties with many going to the deciding frame today was to prove the total opposite of that with a series of one sided matches.In the first session alone the four losing players won a total of three frames between them.The evening matches were slightly more competitive but only even at that only one match reached it's eighth frame.

So what of the games themselves.

John Higgins again showed signs that his game is coming back with an impressive 5-0 win over Ryan Day. His opponent in the quarter finals will be Ali Carter who himself has also struggled to repeat the form that saw him reach the World Final at the Crucible in May but today easily swept aside Stephen Maguire again by a scoreline of 5-0.

Mark Williams who was runner up in controversial circumstances here last year continued his smooth progress through this years event with a 5-2 win over the The Wuxi Classic winner Ricky Walden..He'll face Joe Perry who inflicted a rare 5-0 whitewash on Neil Robertson.

The stand out tie of the round on paper was the clash between two of the games young guns Judd Trump and Mark Allen who have had a few interesting tussles over the last twelve months.It is perhaps wishful thinking to expect fireworks every time these two meet and today wasn't to be one of those days but in a fascinating match where he once again fell behind this time 2-0 Trump showed his fighting qualities to win five in a row and record a 5-2 victory.In the quarter final he will play Graeme Dott who beat Stephen Lee 5-1

Elsewhere Jamie Cope failed to build on his victory over the world no.1 Mark Selby going down 5-1 to Stuart Bingham who now faces Shaun Murphy who got by a battling Mark King 5-3

Tomorrow see's all four Quarter finals taking place and on current form a case can really be made for any of them to lift the title come Sunday.This should make for a very interesting few days of what has probably been the best tournament of the season so far.