Snooker: Higgins Out Ronnie Through

Jamie Cope thrashed John Higgins yesterday in the first round of the UK Championship. What I saw of the match, Higgins was missing some balls that he simply shouldn't be missing but Jamie looked really comfortable and completely unfazed as he eased to victory. Higgins has had a really bad start to the season and needs to pick it up for the second half of the season. Cope won 9-3.

Ronnie stuttered to a 9-6 victory against Michael Holt. He looked to be getting some strange bounces of the cushion and lost his temper by throwing his arm at a shot at one point. But Holt couldn't capitalise on Ronnie's patchy form and eventually Ronnie came home an easy winner.

Mark Allen started his match well against Mark Williams leading 5-3 overnight. Williams had to scrap for the last 2 frames of the session and will be pleased to on be 2 frames behind. Williams didn't play particularly badly, Allen played very well and didn't give his opponent many chances. It will be interesting to see what happens in this match.

In other matches, Nigel Bond and Ding Junhui are locked at 4-4 and Neil Robertson lost to his practice partner and friend Joe Perry by 9 frames to 6. It's been a pretty disappointing start to the season for both Robertson and Ding as well, they were 2 shining stars last season and Robertson really needs to get his game together. At least Ding, at the time of writing, is still in the tournament.