GRAEME Dott's Betfair.com World Championship title-hopes are hanging by a thread after a disappointing start to his last-16 match.
The former world champion returns today 6-2 down to Shaun Murphy knowing he will have to raise his game significantly to stand any chance of securing a quarter-final place at snooker's showpiece event.
Flying the flag as the last Scottish player in the tournament, Dott knows defeat to the Englishman would mean he would become the fifth Scot to have been eliminated before the business end of the £1.1m tournament.
Not since 1988, when seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry lost to Jimmy White, has a Scottish player failed to progress beyond the second-round stage. Dott now has the weight of a nation on his shoulders.
Murphy edged ahead early, but Dott levelled with a break of 77. However, it was Murphy, the 2005 world champion, who dominated with back-to-back centuries – 128 and 112 – to lead 3-1 at the interval. Dott reduced the arrears by winning the first frame after the break, but Murphy resumes with a healthy four-frame cushion ahead of today's two sessions Dott has weight of nation on shoulders sions of the best-of-25 frame match.
Neil Robertson, another former world champion, admitted he had endured a "bad day at the office" as he became the latest big name to bow out at the first-round stage. Robertson was beaten 10-8 by qualifier Robert Milkins, who at one stage trailed the Australian 5-2.
The 2010 world champion admitted: "It was a bad day at the office, but I've had worst defeats. It wasn't a gutting defeat, but it's not great being knocked out in the first round.
"I was playing quite well at 5-2 up, and I didn't really do much wrong, but you can't take anything away from him because he played some fantastic snooker."
A delighted Milkins reflected: "It doesn't get much better than that. I'm ecstatic – chuffed to bits. It's by far the biggest win of my career. Neil is such a tough player to beat. If he gets on top of you, he's very hard to beat."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article