'Rocket' survives a shaky launch

O'Sullivan loses first two frames but comes back strongly against unfancied opponent.

GLASGOW // Ronnie O'Sullivan lost the first two frames but recovered to complete a 5-2 victory over China's Liang Wenbo and set up a second-round repeat of last year's Royal London Watches Grand Prix final against Marco Fu. Although known as "the Rocket", O'Sullivan was slowly into his stride but Wenbo fared badly.

"It was embarrassing, my shots were amazingly off target but I'm capable of worse than that. Thankfully it lasted only for two and a half frames," said O'Sullivan.

"I'm stubborn really and it still bothers me when I play like that. The thing that keeps me going is that I can play well occasionally." The highlight of the opening four frames was a 56 by O'Sullivan in the fourth as he got back to 2-2.

After the interval, O'Sullivan who has reached both ranking finals this season, edged in front for the first time in the match. That soon became 4-2, before he signed off in style with a 103, the break ending with one red still on the table and a 138 possible.

Since his 9-6 defeat to Fu in last year's final, O'Sullivan has reached the final of five out of seven ranking events. Ali Carter came through a tough encounter with Dave Harold to progress to the second round after a 5-4 victory.

"It was a very tough match, Dave played some good stuff with three breaks of 90 odd. He's very good at stopping you play," said Carter who came from a frame down to lead the Northern Ireland Trophy finalist 3-1 at the interval.

The Stoke potter had opened with a 95 but Carter, who was the runner-up at this year's World Championship, then took three on the spin, including the last two without Harold potting a ball. But Harold took the longest frame of the match, almost 36 minutes, to reduce his arrears to 2-3. He levelled in the next and had a great chance for his first competitive maximum but missed the penultimate red.

Carter pulled in front in the next with a 61 but Harold sent the match into a deciding frame with an 89 in frame eight. The final frame was tense but Carter eventually secured victory by potting the penultimate red.

Shaun Murphy suffered his fourth consecutive defeat in a ranking event as he went down 5-3 to Telford's Adrian Gunnell. The world No 36 Gunnell, who now faces Steve Davis, has equalled his best performance in a ranking event in reaching the last 16.

"To beat a player of Shaun's quality is a great confidence boost," said Gunnell, 36. "It will be great to play Steve Davis because he was the reason I started playing snooker. It will also be nice to finally play someone older than me!" John Parrott joined Davis with a hard-fought 5-3 defeat of Mark King. He now faces Ali Carter for a place in the quarter-finals.