Ken Doherty has opened a 5-3 first session lead over twice champion John Higgins at the Powerhouse UK Championship in York.
Doherty holds slender lead over Higgins
Ken Doherty has opened a 5-3 first session lead over twice champion John Higgins at the Powerhouse UK Championship in York.
Doherty, runner-up to Ronnie O'Sullivan 12 months ago, secured the first frame with a break of 110 and cleared green to pink to win the second.
The 1997 world champion then constructed a run of 60 to lead 3-0 and got a snooker before clearing from last red to black to snatch the fourth.
Higgins, the winner in 1998 and 2000, finally got a frame on the board by winning the fifth with a break of 68 but missed a black on 47 in the next and sat out Doherty's 64 clearance to the pink to trail 5-1.
Higgins, who came from 5-2 down to beat Ali Carter 9-5 in the first round, found his scoring touch to win the last two frames of the session with efforts of 83 and 62.
It left Doherty requiring just four of the evening's nine frames to reach the semi-finals and claim his first victory over the Scots in a ranking event since the quarter-finals of the 1997 Embassy World Championship.
However, Higgins holds a 12-3 career advantage over Doherty and has won their last seven meetings.
Ronnie O'Sullivan, meanwhile, found a handy way to keep his title defence on track. The world number one struggled to find his usual fluency as he fell 4-2 behind to Scotland's Drew Henry.
But, after winning the seventh frame, O'Sullivan captured the eighth with a 53 break, which he made by playing shots alternately right and left-handed.
The 'Rocket' has made century breaks in the past using his left hand and once described switching between the two hands as "like pulling the trigger of a gun".
He appeared to be shooting on target when he led Henry 2-1 but the world number 22, who has already knocked out Jimmy White and Stephen Lee, proved his poise under pressure by clearing from last red to black to win the fourth.
And Henry, a UK quarter-finalist two years ago, then added two scrappy frames to open his 4-2 lead before O'Sullivan drew level to leave both players five frames from victory.