Coming here this week the indignity of the Crucible qualifiers loomed large on the horizons of two of the games greats as both John Higgins and Mark Williams struggled to find the consistency that came so easily in their prime,but they can both breathe a little easier now having reached the semi finals here.
At this stage though that is something to think about on Monday,as there is still a tournament here to be won this weekend and both will be fancying their chances after enjoying relatively comfortable victories today.
First up was Higgins against his great friend and fellow Scot Stephen Maguire. Higgins has had a miserable head to head record with Maguire in recent seasons,but took control early in this one to lead 3-1 at the interval.
This was not a free flowing affair by any means,but Higgins wont mind that as he took the two frames he needed to to seal a 5-2 win to reach the semi final of a ranking event for the first time this season.
His opponent in the semi final will be young man who wasn't even born when Higgins first played in a Welsh Open final.
Luca Brecel again showed a growing maturity here to go with his undoubted talent as he recovered from a nervous start to fight back and beat Ricky Walden.
That looked unlikely early on as Walden went into a 3-0 lead,that really should have been 4-0,but Brecel took that fourth frame to go to the interval at 1-3.This proved to be the turning point as the Belgian amazingly took the next four frames as well to record a 5-3 and reach his first ranking event semi final.
The performance of the day though came from Mark Williams as he reached his first Welsh Open semi final in twelve years with an impressive 5-1 win over Marco Fu.
Runs of 103.76,103 & 80 from Williams showed a player really fancying the job here and just as we saw with him in the International Championship,once he gets to the business end the old competitive instincts kick in again.
Next up for him is Ben Woollaston,who continued his fine form this week to beat Gary Wilson 5-2.
So a mixture of the old guard and new young guns in both semi finals with all four feeling they can lift the trophy come Sunday evening.It should be a cracking weekend.
Runs of 103.76,103 & 80 from Williams showed a player really fancying the job here and just as we saw with him in the International Championship,once he gets to the business end the old competitive instincts kick in again.
Next up for him is Ben Woollaston,who continued his fine form this week to beat Gary Wilson 5-2.
So a mixture of the old guard and new young guns in both semi finals with all four feeling they can lift the trophy come Sunday evening.It should be a cracking weekend.
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