The Masters Day 3 Round Up.

Day three at the Masters & all eyes were on the hometown favourite Ronnie O'Sullivan to see if the defending champion could pick up where he left off before Christmas in his quest here for an eighth  Masters title. The answer we got was pretty emphatic.

This was quite simply a flawless display of snooker and there was nothing his opponent Marco Fu could do about it. The tone for the afternoon was set in the opener with a smooth as silk 120 & it was quickly followed by an even smoother 121.

So 2-0 in no time at all and that quickly became 3-0 with runs of 74 & 50 before another century (112 )in the next set us the the interval with a scoreline at 4-0 a pot percentage at 99% & an opponent yet to pot a ball.

Fu did at least manage to register some points when they resumed, but punch drunk from the opening exchanges,he never looked like making an impact in the match and further breaks of 75 & 53 from Ronnie ,put him out of his misery 6-0.

Ronnie spoke after of not feeling well in recent days and to be honest,on this display it may well be the only thing that stops him here this week.

This evenings match was always likely to be a closer affair with both Barry Hawkins & Kyren Wilson looking to put some disappointing recent results behind them here on one of the games biggest stages.

Hawkins,a finalist here in 2015 certainly got the faster start and may will have been disappointed that breaks of 131 & 120 were only good enough to get him to the interval at 2-2.

When they resumed it was Wilsons turn to start rolling in the big breaks,but the result was the same as frames were traded again to leave 4-4.

To this point this had been a high quality match,but perhaps understandably,considering the importance of this match to both,the standard started to drop and things got a bit edgy.It was Wilson though who held it together the best and he potted the balls he needed to seal a 6-4 win & set up a last 8 encounter with Mark Williams.

So all this leaves two places left to be filled in the Quarter finals and they will be filled tomorrow when Shaun Murphy faces Ali Carter in the afternoon & John Higgins takes on Anthony McGill in the evening