Ryan Day and Mark Williams meet in the quarter-finals of the Players Championship and Richard Mann fancies the in-form Day to prevail.
It’s a battle of the Welsh in Llandudno on Thursday night as Ryan Day takes on Mark Williams in the quarter-finals of the Players Championship.
Williams, a former World Champion, has enjoyed something of a renaissance this year and won the German Masters at the beginning of February having earlier lifted the Northern Ireland Open trophy in November.
The left-hander has gone off the boil more recently, though, and crashed out of the last 32 of the Welsh Open when beaten by Martin Gould.
A 4-0 loss to Ali Carter in the Romanian Masters last week was particularly disappointing and Williams will need bounce back to something like his best if he is to stop the in-form Day.
Day is in the form of his life at present having landed back-to-back tournament wins in the Gibraltar Open and Romanian Masters.
While his triumph in Gibraltar was a feather in his cap, his victory in Romania was even more impressive as he numbered a host of big names amongst his victims.
Day thrashed Barry Hawkins, John Higgins and Kyren Wilson on his way to the final where he had too many guns for the resurgent Stuart Bingham.
That final victory might well prove to be one of the defining moments of Day’s career as he displayed a new-found maturity that we had not seen from him previously, coming back from 4-0 down to prevail 10-8.
He continued his stellar run when downing current World Champion Mark Selby 6-3 here on Tuesday and Williams could have his work cut out tonight.
As such, it is slightly surprising to see that Williams is the current favourite for the match and with 5/4 available for Day to come out on top, the thriving cueist must be backed.
Posted at 1400 GMT on 22/03/18.
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