Snooker: Judd Trump bemoans Paul Davison ’s short spell in spotlight (From Gazette & Herald)

Snooker: Judd Trump bemoans Paul Davison ’s short spell in spotlight

3:10pm Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Sport

UK CHAMPION Judd Trump had a word of sympathy for Pickering potter Paul Davison – after taking only 75 minutes to end the Ryedale ace’s dreams of German Masters glory.

Davison came up against snooker’s hottest property in the last 32 of the PartyPoker.net-sponsored ranking tournament at the Tempodrom, in Berlin, after battling his way through preliminary stages to reach the first round of the main event.

He was beaten 5-1 as Trump won his sixth consecutive match in a ranking event to reach the last 16.

The match was played on one of five tables on show in the arena during the early rounds, and Trump – who lifted the UK title in York in December when beating Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen in the final at the Barbican – felt Davison should have been awarded a bigger spotlight after his earlier efforts.

The 22-year-old from Bristol, not a fan of the five-table set-up, said: “It is good for the crowd but I don’t like it. When you earn your right to play at a venue it should be two tables.

“For Paul to qualify by winning his four matches and to play in a PTC environment – it’s not right.”

The opening two frames had been shared but Trump then stepped up a gear and fired in breaks of 50, 75, 60 and 81 to storm through.

However, his bid for the title ended in a quarter-final thriller when Stephen Maguire’s superb clearance saw him take the deciding frame on the black ball for a 5-4 win. Maguire went on to reach the final but lost 9-7 to former world and UK champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, who came from 6-3 down to take his first full ranking title in 29 months.

O’Sullivan’s prize was 50,000 euros, while Davison, currently the world number 81, collected 3,750 euros and 1,400 ranking points.

Davison was playing in the final stages of a ranking event for the first time since the World Open in September 2010, having come through three qualifying matches to reach the final stages.

He had beaten Polish wildcard Krzysztof Wrobel 5-2 last Wednesday to face Trump the following day in the last 32.

The opening two frames in the Wrobel match were shared, and, although Davison moved into a 3-1 lead at the interval, the contest was often scrappy and without fluency, and Wrobel won the next to reduce the lead to just a single frame.

Davison’s experience saw him through, however, and he took the next two frames – the last helped by a break of 38 which left Wrobel needing snookers – to earn the right to meet world number five Trump.