Higgins suffers early exit at Championship League, Wilson reaches last 32

4-time world champion John Higgins suffered an early exit on the Championship League in Leicester, however Gary Wilson reached the final 32 as Group 6 winner.

Higgins dominated his first match in Group 9 on Monday with a 3-0 win over Artemijs Zizins seeing the Scotsman produce breaks of 95, 74 and 120 on the Mattioli Area.

However he then misplaced 3-0 to Ben Mertens, who rolled in breaks of 68, 86 and 82, with a closing 2-2 draw towards part winner Ma Hailong not sufficient because the 20-year-old Chinese language participant produced a break of 111 to assist him edge out Higgins and Mertens by a degree.

However Scottish and Welsh Open champion Wilson accomplished wins over Huang Jiahao (3-0) and Michael Holt (3-1), with a 2-2 draw towards Joe Perry sufficient to see the Wallsend potter end two factors forward of Perry.

Seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan is ready to start his first aggressive motion of the marketing campaign in Group 2 towards Kayden Brierley, Mitchell Mann and He Guoqiang on Tuesday with Jack Lisowski dealing with Anton Kazakov, Jiang Jun and Mark Davis in Group 12.

Stage one consists of 32 teams of 4 gamers. The eight group winners contest an additional two teams with the winners assembly within the closing.

There may be £33,000 on the desk for the winner plus a spot within the Champion of Champions later within the yr which is value one other £12,500 for qualifying.