First Round Match Report

KEN Doherty, the 1997 Embassy World Champion, had to fight hard for his place in the last-16 as he defeated the world number 44 Stuart Bingham 10-8.

The match however will be remembered for Bingham being just two balls away from compiling only the fifth Crucible maximum 147 break, as when the frames were level at 2-2 in the first session, he missed the final pink when trying to force the cue-ball around the table to get back onto the black.

To the anguish of the 25-year-old though, the pink rattled in the jaws of the top-right hand pocket and came out — to in fact knocked the black into the opposite corner pocket.

The final break stood at 134, though cost him a a check for 147,000 British pounds ($213,150), plus 20,000 Britsh pounds ($29,000) for the highest break.

Bingham was playing an opponent in Ken who knows all too well the pain at missing a maximum break with so much at stake. The Irishman missed the final black off its spot at the 2000 Benson & Hedges Masters for a sports car worth around $110,000.

That frame took Bingham into a 3-2 lead but Ken hit back instantly with breaks of 50 and 52 to go back into a 4-3 advantage.

It was testament to Bingham's will that he managed to take the final two frames of the session to hold a crucial 5-4 lead.

This match looked to be a close thing going into the second session, and this was in evidence as they both traded a century breaks each in sharing the four frames to the mid-session interval

The tension however was clear to see in the Englishman as errors started to creep into his game, and Ken mopped up the next three frames to go into a 9-7 lead.

In a very nervy seventeenth frame both players missed opportunities, and once it got down to the final colors Bingham secured it with a superb long blut to get back to 9-8.

Ken knew that if he let this frame go then it would be a tense final frame shoot-out that he wanted to avoid, but after Bingham missed a short-range red the Dubliner stepped in to construct a fantastically calm break of 109 to finish off the match.

"It was a really tough game and it was a toss of a coin in the end," said Ken afterwards. "Stuart played well throughout — I thought he would buckle but he didn't. Beating Hendry here two years ago gave him a lot of confidence nd he must have thought he could do it again.

"I gave him too many chances yesterday so I tried to tighten things up tonight (second session). I didn't want to go to a last frame so I was relieved to get over the line. I'm looking forward to having a couple of days off and taking it easy."

On Bingham's maximum miss Ken commented: "It will haunt him — my missed black still haunts me a bit. Only one other player has made a maximum at Wembley and only four players have made one at the Crucible — that's snooker history and you can't put a price on that. The money would have meant a lot to him as well."

Bingham said about his maximum chance: "At the time I wasn't thinking about the money or how significant it would have been to make a maximum here, although obviously I was gutted to miss the pink.

He then added: "Ken is a great player — he's in the top four for a reason. Despite losing, I really enjoyed the experience of playing at the Crucible again. I was in awe of the place when I stepped out yesterday."