snooker: irish masters
Steve Davis stunned snooker's man-of-the-moment Ken Doherty to reach the quarter-finals of the Irish Masters in Dublin last night.
Not even the six-times world champion gave himself much hope of upsetting Doherty, who in the past seven weeks has captured the Welsh Open and Thailand Masters titles.
However, local hero Doherty looked a pale shadow of the player that has recently dominated the sport and he slipped to a first-round defeat for the second successive year.
In fact, it's been a blank start to the #195,000 tournament for the Irish players after last night's dismissal of Doherty's Nations Cup team-mate Fergal O'Brien.
''I certainly didn't expect to win,'' admitted Davis.''In fact, I parked in a short-stay car park at the airport,'' he grinned. ''Now, I'm going to have to win the tournament to pay the fee.''
Davis has certainly been a bogey man for Doherty in this competition. It's the fourth time in eight years he's been responsible for the demise of the Irish No.1.
Doherty made an ideal start with a break of 62 to take the opening frame 74-18, but it wasn't a springboard for another victory.
Instead, Davies scrapped for every ball and also scored far more heavily than in recent games, chalking up breaks of 45, 42, 74, 61 and 65.
Those contributions helped him recover from 2-1 down to lead 5-3.
Doherty whitewashed Davis 88-0 in frame nine, but Davis wasn't to be denied his famous win and a 35-minute tactical tenth frame was eventually tucked away by Davis.
Peter Ebdon completed the quarter-final line-up with an impressive victory over Stephen Lee containing the highest break of the tournament so far.
Ebdon, the 1995 Masters champion, recovered from 2-0 and 3-1 down to beat world No.5 Lee 6-4, finishing off with a superb 124. Afterwards, he commented: ''I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes a 147 break this week because the table conditions are absolutely superb.''
l A nine-year-old boy is waiting to see if he has won a place in the record books after scoring a break of 105. Michael White, from Neath, South Wales, was playing at his local club when he made the century break.
Michael is only 4ft 6ins tall and is too small to reach the scoreboard and he cannot put the ball on the spot without using a cue.
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