The penultimate day of Scottish Open qualifying takes place at the Morningside Arena in Leicester on Wednesday when another 24 players will take to the baize looking for the four frames they need to seal a place in the main draw next month.
As always in a Home Nations event the leading lights in the world game have had their qualifying match held back to the main venue but we are still seeing some recognisable names competing for a spot in the tournament this week.
Morning Session
One of those recognisable players is the former British Open champion Ryan Day and he will headline the morning session on Wednesday. He has dropped out of the top 16 again and with the cut off for The Masters closing in he is in an important match against the Chinese player Jiang Jun. Two other Chinese players are in action in the morning session with Lyu Haotian the higher ranked of them. He takes on a Joe Perry who looks like he is coming back into a rich vein of form. The other match sees the English Open finalist Zhang Anda going up against the veteran Andy Hicks.
Early Afternoon Session
Ricky Walden made the quarter finals of the Northern Ireland Open last week and he will be looking to set up a tilt at the Scottish Open in the first part of the afternoon on Wednesday. He faces a much improved Hammad Miah in the pick of the matches in this session of play. The young Belgian player Ben Mertens will look to show his talent once again when he takes on the American cueist Ahmed Aly Elsayed while the other match pits Scott Donaldson, who will be hoping to appear at his home event, and Ashley Hugill against each other.
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Later Afternoon Session
Matthew Stevens will be the highest ranked player on show in the second part of the afternoon and he will be hoping to have a routine passage into the main draw when he takes on the Brazilian player Victor Sarkis. Robbie Williams has picked up some decent results in recent times and he’ll be looking for another win when he goes up against Rod Lawler while the other match in this part of the day sees Ross Muir looking to make it through to his home tournament at the expense of the experienced Dominic Dale.
Evening Session
Tom Ford is the star on show in the evening session on Wednesday and he will be looking to make it through to the main tournament at the cost of the talented Louis Heathcote. Joe O’Connor was the finalist in this competition last year and he will need to overcome the challenge of the Hong Kong man Andy Lee if he is to get another shot at the title. The other match presents a great opportunity for two lower ranked players to make it into the main draw when Anton Kazakov faces Jenson Kendrick.
Betting
There isn’t a huge amount of bets that I like over the course of Wednesday but I’m not sure I can be having Anton Kazakov at odds on to beat many on the World Snooker Tour at the minute so the odds against on Jenson Kendrick has to be taken really. I’m not sure Kendrick is too much in terms of quality at this level but it isn’t too long ago that he had a win over Stuart Bingham in the English Open qualifying and he took care of Lukas Kleckers when he was there before running into Ali Carter in the second round.
That is at least something resembling progressive form which I’m not sure you could label at the Ukrainian. To his credit he beat Long Zehuang in the Northern Ireland Open qualifying a couple of weeks ago but that was just his second win since the Championship League last season, the other being at World Championship qualifying when he took care of the Egyptian player Mohamed Ibrahim, which in fairness isn’t much of a form guide. Kendrick has suddenly started scoring a bit better and shouldn’t be 11/10 to beat a player who has won two matches in 1.5 seasons.
Tips
Back J.Kendrick to beat A.Kazakov for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with William Hill
Back him here:
