The British Open moves on at quite a pace on Friday when the 32 remaining players are whittled down to the final eight over the course of the three sessions as two rounds of the tournament are played out inside the Morningside Arena in Leicester.
The last 32 takes place in the morning and the afternoon before the evening session sees the last 16 being played out. Unfortunately we don’t have the draw determined for the last 16 or the line up and won’t have until quite late so we won’t have time to preview that but we do have a chance to look at the third round earlier in the day.
Morning Session
Once again the tables are used throughout all three session on Friday and the morning action will be headlined first up by Mark Williams. He takes on Liam Highfield for a place in the last 16 in the evening. Over on the other main table Matt Selt will meet Zhou Yuelong in what looks like a tasty encounter. The outside tables will be utilised by Allan Taylor and Ross Muir in one of the matches and Jak Jones and Hossein Vafaei in the other.
Dave Gilbert is the star attraction on the main table in the second match of the morning session. He faces off against Andrew Pagett who is looking to make an early impression having got his tour card back. Gary Wilson will be on the other main table looking to build on his win over Stephen Hendry in the previous round when he takes on Xu Si while over on the outside tables the local lad Joe O’Connor will face Anthony Hamilton and Duane Jones meets Jimmy Robertson.
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Afternoon Session
The action on the main table in the afternoon session will see John Higgins looking to make progress when he goes up against a Ricky Walden who is in decent form while our one remaining outright bet Ali Carter takes on Oliver Lines over on the second main table. Lu Ning will look to make further progress over on the outside tables when he takes on Ben Hancorn. Lukas Kleckers is having a good week so far and he’ll hope that can continue when he meets Lee Walker.
The world number one Judd Trump will then round off the third round on the TV table when he faces the fair challenge of Elliot Slessor who is one of the few lower ranked players who takes it to the big names. Over on the other table Stephen Maguire meets the Welsh Open champion Jordan Brown. There is an all-Chinese battle on one of the outside tables when Zhang Jiankang faces Pang Junxu while the other match sees Hammad Miah battling it out with Luca Brecel.
Betting
Mark Williams has looked very ordinary in this tournament so far and might even have been out of the event had Dominic Dale accepted the offer of a rerack in the previous round rather than turn it down and butcher a safety but his stay of execution might be a short lived one. I wouldn’t say Liam Highfield is the best player in the world but he is capable of putting the 30s and 40s that could be enough to win this match.
You can tell Williams hasn’t been pounding the practice table purely on the balls he has missed this week. It might be that he is naturally talented enough that he’ll improve with each match that he plays but he’ll need to because he has looked very indifferent so far. Highfield looked alright in beating Stuart Carrington in the first round and saw off Chen Zifan nicely enough in the second round. I think he might be a big price to cause a huge upset here.
Tips
Back L.Highfield to beat M.Williams for a 3/10 stake at 2.90 with William Hill
Back him here:
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