Mark Williams doesn't fancy his World Championship chances after contact lenses debut

Yesterday at 03:47 AM

Mark Williams is not sounding too confident about his World Championship chances after playing in contact lenses for the first time and suffering a heavy defeat to Ding Junhui.

The Welshman took on Ding in the opening round of the Tour Championship in Manchester and after an even start, lost seven frames on the spin to fall to a 10-3 defeat.

The Chinese superstar was fantastic, making breaks of 116, 78, 56, 52, 78, 102 and 82 to win that string of frames.

However, Williams admitted he struggled as he played in contact lenses in an event for the first time.

The three-time world champion has been suffering with deteriorating eyesight and has been practicing with contact lenses to combat it.

Things have been going nicely on the practice table, but adjusting to tournament play, under the television lights, was always likely to be tricky, which it proved to be.

On Ding’s performance, Williams told ITV: ‘Yeah very good. I don’t think I potted five balls tonight.’

However, on how he dealt with playing in his new lenses, he said: ‘I think the scoreline can show you about that.

‘I’ll have to stick with them. The World Championship is left [this season]. Whoever qualifies is going to be praying they draw me in the first round.

‘No hard luck, he outplayed me, he played really good.’

Ding was celebrating his 38th birthday as he beat Williams and was pleased how he found top form after a sticky start to the game.

‘The first few frames yesterday I was so bad,’ he said. ‘I just tried to score more points in each frame.

‘I felt 70 per cent or 80 per cent tonight. Mark had chances at the start of the match. But tonight he was missing balls and left me chances. Hopefully I can play the way I want to against Kyren.’

It is world champion Kyren Wilson next for Ding in the quarter-finals over two sessions on Thursday.

The pair have met once this season and the Dragon got the better of the Warrior, winning 6-4 in the quarter-finals of the International Championship in November.

The cracking quarter-final line-up also sees Judd Trump take on Barry Hawkins, John Higgins meet Xiao Guodong and Neil Robertson face Mark Selby.

Xiao’s win over Wu Yize on Tuesday meant the 16 seeds for the upcoming World Championship have been set as Wu was the last player who could gatecrash that party.

Last year’s Crucible runner-up, Jak Jones, hangs onto the all-important 16th spot and will avoid qualifying, while Wu will need to win two matches at the English Institute of Sport to make a return to the sport’s greatest show.