White defeats Davis in decider
Whirlwind claims Legends of Snooker Challenge 5-4 at Bedford Corn Exchange.
Jimmy White came from 3-1 behind to win a final frame decider in Thursday night's Times & Citizen Legends of Snooker challenge against Steve Davis.
Both players showed they can be competitive again this season and, although there were no really big breaks for a good crowd at Bedford Corn Exchange, looked fluent in the balls, even when they refused to roll kindly.
Displaying a technique as faultless as when he won six world titles in the 1980s, Davis, aged 51 and still ranked 29 in the world, won the first two frames with runs of 51 and 62.
White, 46, who has slipped to number 62 in the world order, performed an outrageous escape from a difficult snooker in the opener, and rattled in 42 of his own with the balls set against him in the next after Davis had sportingly called a foul on himself stretching over the pack of reds.
But the man who finished as runner-up in six World Championship finals
got on the scoreboard with a break of 86 in the third.
Davis matched that precisely in the next, to re-establish his two-frame advantage, and The Nugget looked set to claim a scrappy fifth until he missed a black with the rest.
The Whirlwind cleared with 38, and then levelled the match, sponsored by Home Start, with a run of 67.
Both players missed chances to win the seventh, Davis making a rare error on a black off its spot and White running out of position when well placed, but Davis won it after his opponent stuck the yellow over a corner pocket.
Londoner White put that right by getting the better of a safety exchange with the master tactician from Romford in the eighth.
And in the ninth and final frame White briefly threatened to claim the match with a maximum clearance until missing a thin cut on the seventh black.
Davis couldn't make him pay though and let White straight back in to pass the winning post.
White had actually produced his most clinical snooker of the evening in the special one-frame amateur challenge against talented Greyfriars Snooker Club junior Sam Harvey.
White played an expert break-off shot, leaving his 14-year-old opponent jammed under the baulk cushion with no possible route to safety.
Harvey, already an England U16 B international and with a competitive 147 break under his belt, quickly committed to a difficult attempted long pot, but left White the sort of opener top players make look easy.
And from there the professional expertly plotted a path through the 15 reds and on to the final pink for a break of 116 that was a joy to watch but also denied the Samuel Whitbread Upper School pupil any chance to show what he can do.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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