Allen Shows Strength of New Generation As Hendry Edges Towards Exit

Mark Allen, the feisty 22-year-old left-hander who is Northern Ireland's best prospect since the days of Alex Higgins and Dennis Taylor, will resume his best-of-19-frames first-round match against Stephen Hendry with a 6-3 lead and the seven-times champion is in clear danger of making his fifth first-round exit since his first appearance here 18 years ago.

Allen defeated Hendry 9-4 in December's UK championship but started edgily and did not pot a ball in the opening frame. Suddenly, though, he burst into life with a trio of frame winners, 70, 87 and 91 and kept Hendry scoreless in the fifth, which he clinched with a run of 49.

Hendry settled with a break of 110 but Allen responded with 102 to regain a three-frame advantage, a sequence which was repeated when Hendry made 93 to take the eighth before Allen made an initial 62 to take the ninth and emerge from a high-quality session with a 6-3 lead. It was not the Hendry of old but nor was it a poor performance. It was simply that the session illustrated, through Allen, the strength of the rising generation and why the 39-year-old Scot may find it difficult to end his three-year title drought.

Allister Carter, who came within a frame of reaching last year's semi-finals and Barry Hawkins, who beat him from five down with six to play in the UK championship, battled for seven hours and nine minutes before their contest was adjourned, pending a one-frame shoot-out after the scheduled evening session.

Carter trailed 3-0 and almost 4-0 before he led 7-3. Hawkins reduced this to 7-6 and almost levelled at 7-7 before Carter reached 9-6 with a total clearance of 128. Most frames had been dogged, tactical affairs and there were to be three more of these, occupying 77 minutes in all, and Hawkins managed to win all of them to level at 9-9.

It lies at the tournament director's discretion whether to adjourn a match to avoid an overrun into the evening session and it was Hawkins who was clearly disappointed, having won the last three frames, that he did not do so on this occasion.

John Higgins belied his failure to reach a single semi-final all season with a fine start to his title defence, beating Matthew Stevens, twice a finalist and three times a semi-finalist here, 10-5. Stevens' 14 reds, 14 blacks 112 took him to 2-1 up but, with one in every three of his safety shots failing to prevent Higgins from potting a ball, the twice champion took a 7-2 interval lead.

Stevens started to threaten by winning the first three frames of the evening to reduce the deficit to 7-5 but, when he failed to make anything of the first clear-cut chance in the next frame, Higgins closed out the match impressively with breaks of 75, 120 and 103.

The Welshman Ryan Day clinched the last frame of the opening session against Ireland's Michael Judge to take a 5-4 lead into today's final session. Day, who reached the semi-finals of the China Open last month, led 4-2 after breaks of 83 and 95 but Judge battled back to level at 4-4 before Day took the ninth frame with a break of 70.

Players seek bigger pot

Neil Robertson has added his voice to the row between snooker's top players and the BBC over sponsorship logos. The BBC's contract with the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association for televised events allows only two logos on players' waistcoats but at the start of last season they were told they would have to give one of these to tournament title sponsors. Speaking after his 10-4 first-round win over Nigel Bond at the Crucible, Robertson said: "It's ridiculous. Darts players can wear four logos and we can only wear one. In formula one cars have 30 or 40 logos on them. It's ridiculous and it costs us lots of money. It would be nice to wear more as we don't have many tournaments. It helps our income out."