Stephen Hendry dashes White's hopes again with late surge

• Stephen Hendry: 9-8 victory

Hendry, who beat White in four World Championship finals during the 1990s, trailed 8-7 against crowd favourite White but won back-to-back frames to triumph 9-8.

The 41-year-old five-time UK champion set up a second-round clash with Welshman Mark Williams. For Londoner White, 48, an increasingly rare chance to make progress in a ranking event was swept from under him by a player who repeatedly scuppered his hopes of becoming world champion.

The match started on Sunday afternoon, with Hendry opening with a break of 104 and White hitting back in the second frame with a run of 115, and the pair resumed level at 4-4 yesterday.

Neither man could sustain the quality play seen in the early stages, although the match remained a high-tension, absorbing affair. Hendry lost the opening frame of the afternoon despite having a break of 46, but punished an error from White with 77 to make it 5-5.

It remained close, neither man able to open a two-frame cushion, but when White made breaks of 61 and 68 in successive frames it was he who seemed the likely winner. However, the 1992 UK champion, who has slipped to 64th in the world, could not close out the match, and Hendry pinched a scrappy 16th frame to make it 8-8 before finishing off with a clinical break of 73.

Later, Ronnie O'Sullivan suffered a stunning 9-6 defeat to qualifier Stuart Bingham. The three-time former world champion looked to be fending off Bingham's threat when he moved from the overnight score of 4-4 to a 6-4 lead with breaks of 62 and 77. However, the 35-year-old, a day on from his birthday, then dropped five frames in a row to make his early exit. Bingham did not even need to score heavily to take the frames, his highest break in the run being a modest 48.

Williams had earlier converted a 6-2 overnight lead into a 9-3 victory over Mark Davis.

World No 3 Ali Carter skidded to a surprise 9-6 defeat against England's Mark Joyce. Former English Amateur champion Joyce beat Steve Davis in the final round of qualifying last week and followed up that result with an even more impressive scalp, making a break of 103 yesterday.

Hong Kong's Marco Fu came from 7-6 down to beat Englishman Barry Hawkins 9-7.