Former world champion Peter Ebdon is out of this year’s tournament after losing 10-7 to Stuart Carrington in the penultimate qualifying round in Sheffield.
Hotly fancied young star Michael White was also an unexpected casualty on Sunday, going down 10-5 to Englishman Craig Steadman.
Ebdon’s fate seemed sealed when he lost the opening seven frames with suggestion of an unbelievable whitewash win over the 2002 Crucible king on the cards.
However, Ebdon took seven out of subsequent nine frames to give himself a glimmer of hope but in the end he had left himself too much to do as Carrington finally compiled the match-winning break in the 17th frame.
It’ll be huge disappointment for the 44 year-old, who fails to qualify for the second successive year, but marks a fantastic victory for Carrington who goes within one of a maiden appearance at the iconic venue.
As for White, the Welshman never looked in contention in his encounter with Steadman, suffering from the similar nerves that ensured he was brought nearly all the way in his first match at Ponds Forge against Steven Hallworth.
Steadman, to be fair, scored heavily with breaks of 116 and a 140 total clearance to his name, and is a much better player than his lowly ranking of 81 suggests.
Indeed, Sunday marked a day where several of the lower seeded competitors got one over on their more illustrious counterparts.
90-odd ranked duo Mitchell Mann and Igor Figueiredo booked their places in the last qualifying stage after respective triumphs over Gerard Greene and Rod Lawler.
Brazilian Figueiredo was 9-5 up on Lawler only to be pegged back to a deciding frame thriller, which he took on the final black well past midnight.
For the global reach of the sport, it would be quite something if a South American could reach the last 32.
Elsewhere, Jak Jones heaped more misery on Jack Lisowski, inflicting a 10-5 defeat on the talented Englishman who has endured a campaign to forget.
There were mixed fortunes for the Chinese contingent competing, with Cao Yupeng and Tian Pengfei downed by Anthony McGill and Jamie Jones respectively.
However, Yu Delu moved one step further to a Crucible spot after a 10-7 victory over Mike Dunn.
Finally, three names very familiar with the famous arena stayed alive in the competition as 2006 champion Graeme Dott, twice semi-finalist Alan McManus, and three-time quarter-finalist Ryan Day all advanced.
Irish duo Ken Doherty and Fergal O’Brien hold narrow leads going into their final session on Monday.
