The opening day of the British Open sees the held over qualifying matches being played out inside the Centaur at Cheltenham Racecourse on Monday where there will be two sessions of play to get the week underway.
The entire top 16 at the time of the cut off for this tournament have had their qualifying match held over so we don’t need to wait too long to see the big names taking to the baize for what is becoming a really good event at this stage of the season.
Afternoon Session
We have two sets of matches in the afternoon session on Monday and it will be the defending champion Mark Williams who occupies the main table in the first of them. He gets his title defence underway with a clash against Rory Thor but the pick of the opening matches is the one between the world number two Mark Allen and the former finalist of this event in Gary Wilson. Tom Ford is on one of the outside tables in this first part of the afternoon. He meets Gong Chenzhi while Ding Junhui takes on Aaron Hill in the other game.
Judd Trump will be on the main table for the second part of the afternoon. He faces the tricky test of Robert Milkins, who while he might be out of form is more than capable of shining on the big stage. Luca Brecel is also scheduled to feature in this part of the afternoon. He meets Mohammed Shehab while John Higgins will start his quest to get back into the top 16 in the rankings with a clash against Ross Muir. The former champion Ryan Day meets Louis Heathcote in the other game in the afternoon.
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Evening Session
As with the afternoon, there are two sessions of play in the evening session on Monday and it will be Ronnie O’Sullivan who graces the main table in the first of those sets of games. He meets the Thai player Manasawin Phetmalaikul. Shaun Murphy will get his title quest underway with a clash against Ian Burns while Ali Carter takes to the Cheltenham baize when he meets the Hungarian rookie Bulcsu Revesz. The other match in the first part of the evening sees Barry Hawkins meeting Liam Davies.
It will be all about the world champion Kyren Wilson in the latter part of the evening. He meets the Belgian player Julien Leclercq but the pick of the matches is probably the one on table two where Mark Selby will meet Pang Junxu in what should be a competitive contest. Zhang Anda will start his bid for the title on one of the outside tables when he takes on Jordan Brown and the other match in the evening will see Jak Jones going up against Sanderson Lam.
Betting
There are a lot of possible mismatches on the card on Monday while some of the bigger names involved in competitive looking matches are priced about right but there is one bet I can’t avoid taking and that is to oppose Tom Ford for the second week in succession. I took Jiang Jun to beat him in Brentwood and that duly happened and I think the shade under 6/4 on Gong Chenzhi to dump Ford out is a price that is well worth taking.
The reason for that is largely because Gong beat Ford on his way to the last 16 in the Xi’an Grand Prix so he knows there is nothing to fear from his opponent here. Gong followed up that run by making the same stage in Saudi Arabia and as well as Ford other notable wins in those runs include Si Jiahui and Jackson Page. Ford has now played six matches this season and he has lost five of them whereas Gong has plenty of confidence after two solid runs to the last 16 of decent sized events. I think Ford could be dumped out again here.
Tips
Back G.Chenzhi to beat T.Ford for a 3/10 stake at 2.45 with Coral
