Hospital visit fails to put brakes on Doherty
An infection picked up at the Masters last month led to Doherty suffering from a burst ear drum, but the Dubliner showed no ill-effects as he produced a battling performance in front of his home fans.
“I feel better, and it’s nice to win here because this tournament is second only to the world champion-ship for me,” said Doherty, who compiled breaks of 50, 63, 56, 67 and 56.
Paul Hunter played through the pain barrier to finally record his first victory of 2005 The world number four defeated Malta’s Tony Drago 5-3 to end a seven-match losing run which began last November.
But the three-time Wembley Masters champion was almost forced to pull out of the event, having developed mystery stomach pains a fortnight ago.
“I’m in constant pain down my right-hand side, and it makes it hard to bend over and play,” said Hunter.
“I thought I might have appendicitis and went to the doctors, but they don’t know what’s wrong with me.
“They asked if I’ve ever had an operation on my kidneys, because they couldn’t find one of them,” he added. “The doctor told me to come and play, and if the pain was still there to go back and they would perform keyhole surgery.”
The pain did not have an adverse effect on his form though.
“It’s amazing, because it’s the worst I’ve felt all season but I’ve still won,” said the Yorkshireman.
Jimmy White produced a solid performance to reach the second round. Londoner White spends nearly half the year in Ireland and is having a house built in Kilcock, Co Kildare.
The ‘home’ advantage seemed to tell as he weighed in with breaks of 65, 53 and 71 on the way to beating Leicester’s Mark Selby 5-1.
Steve Davis also advanced to the last 16 with a 5-2 defeat of namesake Mark Davis. Davis will face old foe Stephen Hendry for a quarter-final place if the Scot beats Robin Hull.
John Higgins became the first big-name casualty when he was beaten 5-4 by Irishman Michael Judge.
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