Last years Welsh Open winner, Ali Carter, started very strongly yesterday in the defence of his title. The 2009 Welsh Open was Carter’s first ever world ranking crown and after a mixed year he will be doing his utmost to secure back-to-back Welsh titles.

Carter came through his first round match with a confident and assured 5-1 victory over recent World 6-red Champion Mark Davis.

The 30-year-old dubbed ‘The Captain’ due to having a pilots licence beat Joe Swail 9-5 in last years final said after his match, “My season has not really got going yet. All of the top players are more or less as good as each other so you can’t keep winning. You have good and bad spells and you just have to enjoy it when it’s your turn.”

The englishman will now have a much tougher test in round two as he comes up against Australian Neil Robertson. The Thunder from Down Under had a comfortable win himself yesterday against Chinese qualifier Liu Song.

Robertson is currently sitting in third in the provisional rankings and the book makers actually have him as third favourite for this title. He has shown some excellent form this season and even played excellently, despite losing to Ronnie O’Sullivan at the Masters.

Meanwhile Andrew Higginson who reached his only ever ranking final at this event in 2007 had another victory to remember by defeating the out-of-form Marco Fu 5-2. It has been a strange season for Fu as last week he played some awesome snooker when winning the Championship League Group 4. He knocked in 4 centuries in six frames in his first two matches of that tournament but just can’t seem to make it happen in ranking events.

Elsewhere, Matthew Stevens got into the first round proper and will play Shaun Murphy after a 5-4 win over Barry Hawkins, the match was held over to the venue for the benefit of the Welsh fans.

Barry Hawkins came out with guns blazing and beat Peter Ebdon 5-0 to go into round two. Ebdon is one of the players that is fighting for his top 16 status and this latest defeat will not help his cause.

Finally, you may have noticed that the Welsh Open has a new sponsor. Totesport.com is the second sponsorship appointment of Barry Hearn’s reign at the top of World Snooker and is again greatfully received.

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