Gould conquers Fu again
Martin Gould beat Marco Fu 10-8 in the first round of the World Championship on Wednesday to repeat his win of 12 months ago.
Last Updated: 20/04/11 6:55pm
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Martin Gould beat Marco Fu 10-8 in the first round of the Betfred.com World Championship on Wednesday to repeat his win of 12 months ago.
The 29-year-old from Pinner had to come from behind having trailed 6-3 after Tuesday's opening session, with Gould proceeding to win seven of nine frames in session two.
Gould will now play Judd Trump, who sent reigning world champion Neil Robertson packing at the weekend.
He beat Fu 10-9 at the same stage in Sheffield last year and came close to knocking out Robertson when they met in the second round.
Gould led Robertson 11-5 but eventually succumbed 13-12 and will be hoping he can finish the job this time against 21-year-old Trump.
Hong Kong cueman Fu had shown inspired form in the early stages of the match but was outplayed on Wednesday.
Gould reeled off five frames in a row to lead 8-6, and he could have won the next as well but wasted an early chance in the 15th frame.
He managed to blast the black at a corner pocket so firmly it jumped off the table and landed on the Crucible carpet.
A break of 60 enabled Fu to narrow the gap to 8-7 and he then drew level with a break of exactly 100.
But Gould fought back with a run of 59 and, having jumped back into the lead, he won the 18th frame as well.
A disappointed Fu said: "Some of the pots I made were pretty good but overall I'm just too inconsistent.
"It's just frustrating for me at the moment."
Fu added that he had been woken in the middle of the night by a hotel fire alarm but stressed the incident had not affected his performance.
"Obviously I was distracted but I went back to sleep half an hour later. It wasn't that at all," he said.
Gould said: "I'm quite happy with the way I played. I can still play a lot better but I'm just glad to be into the next round.
"I knew if I could get three or four frames on the bounce, which I did, he might start feeling it a bit more.
"I always know that I can handle it if I need to, unless I'm 11-5 up!"
Slow
Rory McLeod has also reached round two, the 40-year-old from Wellingborough progressing for the first time with a drawn-out 10-6 victory against Ricky Walden.
The pair's play was so slow on Tuesday that they were only able to complete eight frames rather than the usual nine in the opening session and little had changed 24 hours later.
McLeod eventually won the 16th frame, which lasted for 53 minutes and delayed the afternoon matches, after Walden left him an easy blue.
Walden inadvertently potted the pink when attempting to play safe, ending a battle which had lasted seven hours and 16 minutes.
Both players later blamed the other for the tedious fare on offer, which had spectators streaming towards the exit doors.
"It was like a dentists' appointment, absolutely painful from start to finish," Walden said.
"It was a horrible game, I didn't enjoy one minute of it.
"The way Rory plays is so painful.
"I've got nothing against Rory, he's a great guy, and the way he plays the game is fair enough.
"But if everyone played like that we wouldn't have a game. People can't wait to get out for a break.
"The game would be dead."
McLeod countered: "He played a lot slower than me today and yesterday.
"I know him as a fast player. I was trying to get on with it.
"He controlled the pace a bit more than I did.
"Look at the video again - take a look at the shot times and you can see who was taking a long time and who wasn't."
Unfortunately for McLeod, those times showed that he spent an average of 33 seconds over each shot, while Walden took 29 seconds.
Fightback
Later, 2006 champion Graeme Dott held off a fightback by Mark King to win their first-round match 10-7.
The Scot, who also finished runner-up last year, began the session 6-3 ahead and stretched his lead to 7-3 before King started his revival with a break of 138, the highest so far in this year's championship.
King came back to trail just 7-6, but Dott pulled away once more to oust the Romford potter.
John Higgins was also in action on Wednesday, 12 months after a second-round loss to Steve Davis that was itself followed by a match-fixing scandal involving the three-time champion.
The Scot, who served a six-month suspension but escaped the most serious charge of agreeing to fix frames after it was dropped, received a warm welcome in Sheffield.
He began slowly against Stephen Lee but made three centuries in five frames after the mid-session interval - 132, 101 and 131.
Higgins carries a 6-3 lead into Thursday's final session.