Stephen Maguire improved his already outstanding recent record by safely reaching the second round of the £225,000 Welsh Open in Newport last night.
And Welshman Dominic Dale edged through 5-4 against Mark Davis.
Despite becoming frustrated over a series of 'kicks' that hindered fluent breakbuilding, the confident Scot Maguire was still able to set up a meeting with his regular practice partner Stephen Hendry by beating Stuart Bingham 5-3.
It means that in five world-ranking events so far during the 2004-05 campaign, Maguire has won 16 of 18 matches.
The 23-year-old Glaswegian, who figured in the final of November's British Open and followed up by dominating the Travis Perkins UK Championship, had beaten Bingham 5-1 only four days ago in the final qualifying round of the Irish Masters.
This time, though, Maguire was not in top gear with the exception of a two-frame burst from 1-1 to 3-1 during which he put together runs of 72 and 81.
Bingham kept plugging away but Maguire held firm under mounting pressure to compile a decisive break of 53 in the eighth frame.
"I still feel as though I'm playing well and I felt good at the start so I'll just blame the table. "Every second shot was a kick and that didn't help either Stuart or me," said the provisional world ranked number two.
"No-one knows what causes bad contacts but I do know they put me in a bad mood tonight and you can't play your best when you're in a bad mood. I'm just pleased I did enough to win."
Maguire, one of the bookmakers' favourite to pocket the £35,000 first prize and become only the 11th player to capture back to back ranking titles, now tackles Hendry in tournament play for the first time even though they have often met on the practice table.
Quinten Hann completed a double Australian success with a 5-1 victory over Bristol's Andrew Norman, who endured something of a baptism of fire on his debut in the final stages of a world-ranking event. The often controversial Hann made breaks of 75 and 60 en route to securing a second-round encounter with last year's Crucible finalist, Graeme Dott.
Earlier in the day, Neil Robertson needed only 72 minutes to impressively see off Rob Milkins 5-0.
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