Ken Doherty back on the winners rostrum

celticfc

Well it looks like Ken's rumoured hard pre-season work is paying off. He has thisevening beaten Martin Gould 6-2 to win World Snooker's second Pro-Challenge event (The first one was won by Stephen Maguire).

Okay, it's not the biggest tournament in the world, it has no ranking points and indeed it is only a 6-red tournament, but (and it's a BIG BUT) it's match practice/winning form of which he had little or none of last year.

Infact, last year he only won 2 matches in the entire campaign (Hard to believe I know). This season so far he won both of his Shanghai Masters qualifier matches (A major ranking event these days) to get through to the main event (Starts next week on EuroSport) and now a tournament win to boot.

There's a whole season ahead, so this should give him the confidence and self-belief he never looked like having a year ago to get back towards the top 16 (well top 32 anyway this season).


From EuroSport:

Doherty wins Prestatyn Super Sixes

Ken Doherty beat Martin Gould 6-2 in the final to win the Pro Challenge Series Super Sixes tournament in Prestatyn.

The 1997 world champion put his poor form of the last couple of years behind him with some fantastic snooker in the closing stages, conceding just three frames in his final three matches.

Doherty very nearly took the prize for the fastest maximum break of 75 as well. In the penultimate frame of his 6-1 demolition of Atthasit Mahitthi in the semi-final, the Irishman missed the final black that would have given him the perfect clearance in two minutes 15 seconds.

That miss was some consolation for Stuart Pettman, who took the break prize with his two minute 31 second maximum in the first frame of his 5-3 second-round defeat by Jimmy Michie.

Congrat's to Ken.

KrazeeEyezKilla

He was always likely to improve, he couldn't get much worse than last season. Being stuck in a cubicle in Prestayn would drive anyone mad if they were used to being on TV for every tournament.

zack01

It's great news, i mentioned it on an earlier thread (snooker calendar 2009-2010 season) that the owner of the club we play in had said this season would see a return to form for Ken, yes the tournament is nothing major but a win is a win and winning can bring a lot of confidence into his game. As the saying goes 'Form is temporary, class is permanent' ! The first ranking tournament gets under way in Shanghai soon so here's hoping Ken has a good run and gets back up the rankings soon. As i said in the other thread he's a hell of a nice guy and anytime he calls to the club to see his mate the owner he always has time for me and the other players in the club.

Michael Collins

Ah great. Good on him, let's hope he keeps it up.

zack01 wrote: »

As i said in the other thread he's a hell of a nice guy and anytime he calls to the club to see his mate the owner he always has time for me and the other players in the club.

Yeh, I always remember a talk he gave once and at the end he said "I'm amazed so many people have turned up just for a guy who pots little balls into pockets for a living" or something to that effect. Now that's the right attitude for a sports personality, a lot of other sports men could do well to have that attiude...

Great news