UK Championship - Day three - Bingham bounces past erratic Ronnie

We've been spoilt with some exceptionally high quality snooker so far at this year's UK Championship, perhaps even the best televised event to hit our screens in a while.

But today, thanks to two unthinkable surprises, the entertainment value went through the roof.

Stuart Bingham took the biggest scalp of the day, knocking out red-hot favourite Ronnie O'Sullivan. The world number 23 rolled in five consecutive frames after falling 6-4 behind, to win the match 9-6.

But for as well as the Basildon potter played and the composure he showed, a lack of focus from the Rocket clearly played a major part in deciding the outcome of this match.

This slap dash attitude from Ronnie reared its ugly again, and I have no idea why because he's been in such great form leading into this tournament. 

It was almost as if a switch flicked, and from that point on, he was slapping the balls all over the table and going for just about every ball at full pace. Bingham knows he can play even better than this but he just had to keep his cool to get the job done, because even if derailed, this is maybe when O'Sullivan is at his most dangerous. Without a care in the world, he can always turn on the magic.

But Bingham had to forget who he was up against, and just play the balls in front of him. He did that, and the reward was probably earning the best result of his career so far, alongside his famous first round win over reigning world champion Stephen Hendry at the Crucible in 2000.


Had it not been for Bingham, Mark Joyce probably would have led this article, as he without doubt enjoyed the best result of his career today.

The world number 60 defied all the odds to beat world number three Ali Carter 9-6. He was well worth his win too, playing the best snooker of the two players in both sessions. While Carter may not be viewed as a scalp on the scale of O'Sullivan, it's not far away, merely because this result was so unlike Ali. He's done well to climb so high in the rankings in recent seasons, and most of it comes down to his consistency. Such is his temperament and methodical approach to the game, he rarely slips up when he shouldn't. Today was a different story. Joyce never allowed him to settle in this match, and he was rewarded.

Although these giant killings make for great TV, the most entertaining match of the day though was between White and Hendry. Locked at 4-4 overnight, this final session was touted as a classic, and so it proved. They were nip and tick all the way until Hendry eventually nicked the match 9-8, winning the final two frames, with White right at the winning post.

It's this kind of nerves of steel from Hendry that has seen him reap so much success throughout his career. It was vintage Hendry. As throughout most of career, when the pressure was on again today, he switched into a machine of a player to finish the job. Jimmy can take heart from his run to the first round though, and will surely be even more hungry for televised matches.

Ryan Day won the other dramatic deciding frame of the afternoon. He eventually beat Mark King, who recovered from 5-3 down to lead 8-7 in this match. The final frame went all the way to the final black, before the Welshman stole it in dramatic fashion.

He'll face Shaun Muprhy in the next round, who finished off Patrick Wallace 9-5 in their second session. In the other non-televised matches, Mark Williams stormed past Mark Davis 9-3, Judd Trump retained his overnight lead to beat Jamie Cope 9-6 and Marco Fu beat Barry Hawkins 9-7.

Tonight's evening session saw the start of four second round matches.

I said after Neil Robertson's first match that it was too early to judge his credentials to win this year's UK Championship. He smashed Rory McLeod 9-1 in the first round. But it was such a routine match for him, I wanted to reserve my judgement.

But after he stormed into an 7-1 lead against Andrew Higginson tonight, amassing a total of 677 points, it's safe to say he's turned into the man to beat now. His break building has been relentless. In this form, it doesn't look like it matters who he's playing. He's just flying.

Another player in tremendous nick is Mark Allen. We all saw how well reigning champion Ding Junhui played in his first match, but on the non-televised table, he trails the Northern Ireland man 6-2 ,and was 4-0 down at the interval. It's difficult to judge how much that match is down to Allen playing well or Ding being out of sorts, but in truth, it's probably a mix of both. If Allen advances to the quarter-finals, it will be interesting to judge him for myself.

In the battle of Scotland, John Higgins and Graeme Dott are level pegging at 4-4 in an interesting match with neither player giving much away. And when I logged off for the day, Stephen Maguire and Mark Selby were at 2-2.

Not a bad day at Telford. Roll on number four!