Snooker: MacGillivray cues up an extension

GRANTON’S Craig MacGillivray extended his lead at the top of the Scottish Snooker main tour rankings after defeating Corstorphine’s Ross Vallance 4-2 in the final of Event 2 at the Locarno Snooker Club in Edinburgh.

MacGillivray survived a scare against Falkirk’s Scott McCrindle in the last 16 recovering from 2-1 down to level at 2-2 and then going 50 behind in the decider before clearing the table for a 3-2 victory.

In the quarter-finals, the 40-year old made a 62 break on the way to a 3-0 victory over Perth’s Scott Dunbar, the Perth ace unable to produce the form of his previous round where he made a break of 100 in a whitewash of Lloyd Condron. MacGillivray defeated Perth’s Bobby Cruickshanks 3-1 in the semi-final before his victory over Vallance, the Corstorphine player having earlier enjoyed a tremendous 3-1 victory over Glasgow’s Fraser Patrick who will feature in the final stages of next month’s German Masters after making it through the qualifying stages.

MacGillivray has now won four events in only five tournaments in Scotland this season after winning the opening two Masters Series events and now two Main Tour events. He said: “I am obviously delighted to win another Main Tour Event but I wasn’t at my best. There was a few shocks with some top players losing early on but I played steady enough to win.”

Meanwhile, Michael Leslie was due to be back in action today playing England’s Michael Wasley in the opening round of the Haikou World Open Qualifiers at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield. Locarno based player Scott Donaldson plays India’s Aditya Mehta.