Higgins behind after opening session

John Higgins
12 April 2012

John Higgins made a sluggish start to the defence of his title at the Betfred.com World Snooker Championship in Sheffield on Saturday.

While Mark Allen on the neighbouring table went close to claiming a maximum 147 break and prize money of £157,000, Higgins was left trailing 5-4 after the opening session of his first-round clash with Barry Hawkins.

Graeme Dott was the last defending champion to lose in the first round, when he was beaten by Ian McCulloch in 2007, and Higgins heads into tonight's concluding session knowing he must perform better. There remained a long way to go, though, with the winner needing 10 frames to book a place in the second round.

After Higgins won the opening frame, breaks of 51, 69 and another 51 put 30-year-old Hawkins in the driving seat.

Higgins hit back after the mid-session break with a run of 61 and then split the next four frames with Hawkins.

Allen was utterly dominant in his first-round match against Tom Ford, who was enduring a Crucible debut to forget.

The 24-year-old Northern Irishman looked on course to join Sheffield's maximum club when he potted all 15 reds and blacks and added the yellow to reach 122.

But in seeking position on the green he needed to take the white around the table and lost position, snookering himself.

Allen still almost managed to pot the green, but the ball stayed up. He would have been in line for a £147,000 bonus and the £10,000 top-break prize had he managed to clear the table.

Ford managed to win his first frame with a break of 107 in the eighth, but Allen's ton in the next gave him an 8-1 lead.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in