Snooker: O'sullivan's Day at the Races Pays Dividends

Ronnie O'Sullivan, 9-7 down at lunch, took himself off to Pontefract races and returned in a winning mood last night to defeat Ryan Day 13-10 and earn a World Championship quarter-final date today against Mark Williams, like him twice the title holder here.

Day, an outstanding potter and break-builder, had runs of 104 and 80 in turning arrears of 6-4 into a 7-6 lead and at 7-7 was fortunate enough to fluke the yellow out of a snooker to initiate a winning clearance to pink. By adding the last frame of the morning, he was poised to record the most high-profile success of his career.

He was also within sight of winning the first frame of the evening, but it went to O'Sullivan on the pink after his snooker on the last red had yielded a free ball.

A shattering mistake cost Day the next frame. The 26-year-old Welshman, with the table at his mercy, intended to screw back from a simple pink but instead leapt the cue ball over it to let O'Sullivan in to clear from the last red to pink for 9-9.

"I think the dome of the tip got a bit hard and wasn't taking the chalk," Day offered in explanation. "I've been trying to break the tip up a bit to get the chalk into it for the last few days. I've miscued three times in this match and I haven't miscued three times in three seasons."

The balance of the match lurched emphatically O'Sullivan's way as breaks of 68, 49, 51 and 64 swiftly carried him through the next three frames to go three up with four to play. Day scrambled the next in what was patently a lost cause, as O'Sullivan proved by clinching the next and the match with a run of 75. "I'm gutted because I played exceptionally well," Day said. "The match was there to be won."

O'Sullivan likewise ran into cue troubles, as he had allowed the tip he had prepared for Sheffield to get wet when rain seeped through his cue case last week on a walk to his hotel. Yesterday he was playing not with the original but a second replacement and earlier in the session it did not appear to be quite bedded in.

His performance was not one of his best but he still looks the man to beat.

Earlier Ken Doherty progressed from an overnight 8-8 to a 13-8 win over Matthew Stevens to reach the quarter-finals. In seeking an ultra-thin contact to pot Sunday's last black the Irishman had missed it altogether to concede the frame, a blunder that caused him a restless night.

But, said the Dubliner: "I didn't let it weigh me down [today]." He won the first frame with a break of 83 and the second from 31 behind with a 63. Further runs of 51, 69 and 67 put him four up with five to play and Stevens potted only two balls in the remaining frame.

"Ken played fantastic and didn't miss more than five or six balls all the way through," said Stevens, twice runner-up and three times a losing semi-finalist here in the past six years.

Doherty will tackle Marco Fu of Hong Kong while the other last-eight match in the top half brings together the defending champion Shaun Murphy and Peter Ebdon, champion in 2002 and who yesterday ground out a 13-2 victory over David Gray with a session to spare.

Graeme Dott gave Scotland a quarter-finalist for the 18th consecutive year by holding off Nigel Bond 13-9 although the 40-year-old could at least depart with the memory of a 10-9 tie-break triumph over Hendry and an end-of-season ranking of either 21 or 22, his best for six years.