Ken Doherty trails Neal Foulds 5-3 in the third round of the UK Championship at Preston after last night's first session. Doherty's best break was 61 and led only once - he won the opening frame - against Foulds, a UK finalist at Preston in 1986 but now down to 30th in the rankings from a career-high third. Foulds requires four of the remaining nine frames to pull off another Guild Hall giant-killing act.
The organisers will be hoping that Doherty and Stephen Hendry, who is level 4-4 with Sean Storey, come through following defeats last night for two of the big draws, former winners Jimmy White and John Parrott. Steve Davis and John Higgins were knocked out on Monday night. Parrott, the 1991 champion, lost 9-6 to Mark King while his successor, White, went down for the first time in five meetings with Alan McManus.
White started favourite against McManus after winning their meetings earlier this season in the German Open qualifiers and at the Grand Prix in Bournemouth. But McManus had clearly not read the script though and produced a superb 9-3 triumph to join King in the last 16.
The tournament later lost another top 16 star when Tony Drago squandered a 5-3 first session advantage to lose 9-8 to Welshman Matthew Stevens.
"I didn't compete," grumbled White, who dropped the opening five frames to McManus and never recovered. "I've had problems with the tip on my cue since beating Paul Davies.
"And if you have no confidence in the tip you might as well pick up another cue. I thought I'd knocked it in but you don't play safety in practice so when it came to the match my safety was poor.
"I played badly and he played well, it was as simple as that," added White. "I'm disappointed because this is the last UK (Championship) at Preston and I desperately wanted to try and win the trophy again before we move to Bournemouth next year."
Hendry was 10 to 1 on favourite to beat Storey but he couldn't shake his opponent off despite breaks of 69, 55 and 50 plus a fourth-frame effort of 105. That was Hendry's 399th century of his career.
The Irish got off to a good start at the World Amateur Championships in Zimbabwe yesterday with Joe Canny and TJ Dowling registering victories.
Canny, the 1996 national champion, got off to a shaky start and needed a black to take the first frame 50-46 against Ramon Habib of India. In frame two he also had just a few points to spare before eventually pulling away to win quite comfortably.
Dowling, the European under19 champion and World under-21 quarter-finalist, didn't even have to raise his cue in anger with the withdrawal of his Kuwaiti opponent from the tournament.
