Ding suffers shock early defeat to Yu in Germany

Published on Friday 3 February 2012 01:15

Tour rookie Yu Delu caused a major upset by knocking out Ding Junhui in the first round of the PartyPoker.net German Masters yesterday.

The all-Chinese contest went the way of 24-year-old Yu, who surged into a 3-0 lead before holding his nerve to clinch a 5-3 victory.

World No 9 Ding has had a disappointing season to date and was again far from his best in Berlin where breaks of 68 and 56 from Yu carried the underdog, 73rd in the rankings, to his surprising success.

In no way surprising was the way in which Judd Trump cruised through his opening match, beating Pickering’s Paul Davison 5-1.

Davison won a wild-card match on Wednesday to reach the opening round but was outclassed by UK champion Trump who had breaks of 50, 75, 60 and 81.

Bristolian Trump followed up his UK title in York with a run to the Masters semi-finals, and said after seeing off Davison: “I want to keep my momentum going at this event.”

There was little time for Trump to rest though, as his second-round match against Antrim’s Mark Allen, the man he beat in the UK final, was scheduled for last night.

Allen looked to be on his way out when he trailed Tom Ford 4-1, and even after getting back to level terms his hard work seemed set to go unrewarded.

Ford left Allen needing a snooker in the deciding frame, but the Northern Irishman managed to come from the brink of defeat to set up his clash with Trump.

Masters winner Neil Robertson beat Marcus Campbell 5-2, while former world champion Graeme Dott thrashed Thailand’s James Wattana, the Scot winning 5-0.

Logged in as:

Comment here. Start typing your comment here:

Post comment

Please adhere to our Community guidelines

Your view

Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.