The final day of qualifying for the Wuhan Open takes place on Tuesday when there are two sessions of action inside the Mattioli Arena in Leicester on a day where we will finalise the main draw except for the held over matches.
We’ve had some top 16 players on show and some have had their matches held over to the main venue but there is still a decent level of players competing on Tuesday so the quality should remain high throughout the day.
Morning Session
There is just the one player from the top 16 in the rankings on show in the morning session and that is the former Shootout winner Chris Wakelin. He has a tasty looking clash against Marco Fu to overcome in a contest which should be a lot later in the competition than it is. Two other players in the top 32 take to the baize to open up their season in the morning. Dave Gilbert and Lei Peifan are the two in question. Gilbert faces Ka Wai Cheung while Peifan has a meeting with Ng On Yee to overcome.
There are four other matches taking place in this session. Xu Si is one of the higher ranked players on show and he’ll face Chris Totten while two Welsh players will be looking to make it through when Jackson Page starts a season against Ross Muir and Ryan Day facing off against Brazilian ace Jonas Luz. Two other players get their campaign underway in the morning. Robert Milkins will be looking to arrest his slide down the rankings when he takes on Wang Yuchen.
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Afternoon Session
Two players from the top 16 in the world rankings are on show in the afternoon session which is the final one of this qualifying competition. Kyren Wilson is the highest ranked player on show across the two sessions on the day. He will go up against the newly qualified on tour cueist in Connor Benzey. Barry Hawkins is the other leading light on show and he has a potentially awkward test against Julien Leclercq to navigate.
There are plenty of good players on show in this session. Jak Jones and Stuart Bingham are just outside the top 20 in the world and will be eyeing up a campaign to get back into the top 16. They go up against Oliver Brown and Liam Highfield respectively. Ben Woollaston ended last season at the Crucible and he starts this one against Ken Doherty while Jimmy Robertson faces Liam Pullen. The other match sees Anthony McGill meeting Jimmy White.
Betting
Wang Yuchen ended the season for Robert Milkins last term and there is nothing to suggest that the Asian player won’t double down on that this time around too. Milkins has actually lost his first ranking event match in the last two seasons and that probably isn’t a surprise because he never strikes us as someone who spends the summer pounding the practice table and it probably shows in his early performances. To be fair, his entire season was pretty ordinary last term too so he can’t have much confidence going into this one.
The Asian players do tend to spend the summer months working hard on their game ready to hit the ground running, especially this term with the opening match being to qualify for an event in that part of the world. Wang actually finished last season just missing out on qualifying for the World Championship where Hossein Vafaei beat him in the final qualifier and he was unlucky in a few tournaments last term. Barry Hawkins beat him in the final qualifying round for the UK Championship and he lost to John Higgins in a deciding frame in the World Open qualifiers. Hawkins went on to make the final of the UK and Higgins won the World Open so things could have been a lot different for Wang but I think he makes up for that with a win here.
Tips
Back W.Yuchen to beat R.Milkins for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfred
