The opening day of the Wuhan Open final stages sees a mixed of held over qualifying matches and first round games being played out in China on a day where there are three sessions of play to get the week underway.
With some held over matches still to be played we don’t have to wait too long for the bigger names to start coming to the party and on Sunday the likes of Judd Trump and the world champion Kyren Wilson will head up proceedings.
Morning Session
All bar three of the held over qualifying matches take place in the morning session with the defending champion Judd Trump getting his title defence underway when he takes on Antoni Kowalski. That will be on the main table while on table two the second highest ranked Chinese player Zhang Anda will be on show. Dean Young is his opponent. The other three held over matches involve Chinese amateur players as Cai Wei takes on his compatriot Yuan Sijun while Zhou Jinhao meets the former Welsh Open champion Jordan Brown and Huang Hao faces Martin O’Donnell. In the two first round matches Chris Wakelin faces Haris Tahir and Allan Taylor meets David Lilley.
Afternoon Session
There is just the one held over match in the afternoon session which was meant to include Ronnie O’Sullivan but the Rocket pulled out of the tournament over the weekend so instead there is a great chance for both Mark Joyce and Mitchell Mann to make the main draw when they meet. The rest of the session is all first round matches with Barry Hawkins the highest ranked player on show. He faces off against Jimmy Robertson while Ryan Day takes on Stan Moody. The pick of the matches could well be the one between Jackson Page and the English Open champion Neil Robertson. The other matches see the English Open semi-finalist Ishpreet Singh Chadha taking on Duane Jones and Dylan Emery facing Long Zehuang.
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Evening Session
There are two held over matches in the evening session with the world champion Kyren Wilson competing on one of the main tables when he takes on Liam Davies. The Chinese superstar Ding Junhui will be on the other main offering when he takes on Robbie McGuigan. The other matches are all from the main draw as Ali Carter is the leading light on show in them. He takes on Mark Davis while Jak Jones meets Tian Pengfei. Jack Lisowski will look to take advantage of a kind draw when he meets Iulian Boiko. Marco Fu plays Louis Heathcote while Matthew Selt takes on Pang Junxu in the other game.
Betting
I’m a little bit surprised that the bookmakers haven’t cottoned onto the form of Ishpreet Singh Chadha and I would expect him to have too much for a fairly limited Duane Jones in one of the matches in the middle section of the day. Jones has won a few matches this season but his scoring hasn’t really been there and generally when he comes up against someone in form or a decent player he is found wanting and the Indian is very much the former if he isn’t the latter.
Ishpreet looked in really good touch at the English Open and while that tournament didn’t end how he wanted it to in the semi-final, he has bounced back and qualified for the Northern Ireland Open since then so he doesn’t seem to have let that semi-final loss affect him too much. Ishpreet is a decent scorer but he showed in Brentwood that he can play some solid safety too and I expect him to be too good for Jones in this one.
Tips
Back I.Singh Chadha (-1.5 frames) to beat D.Jones for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Unibet
