The race to become the 2025 Wuhan Open champion is heating up with the last 16 contenders in the draw back in action on Wednesday.
Reigning world champion Zhao Xintong was the biggest casualty on day three, with the Chinese star bowing out through a 5-4 defeat to Stephen Maguire.
The latter, who already has a ranking title to his name this season after his victory at Championship League Snooker, won a dramatic deciding frame on the last black to progress.
Maguire will look to continue his strong start to the 2025/26 campaign when he faces last year’s finalist Si Jiahui for a quarter-final berth.
Si, who ousted Jackson Page in the last 32, is one of nine players from the top 16 who are still in the running for glory and the £140,000 top prize.
Among the others is Judd Trump, with the world number one coming through a tricky tie with friend Jack Lisowski in the last round.
Trump is in the bottom half of the 2025 Wuhan Open draw and will next encounter Gary Wilson as he attempts to regain the title he previously won in 2023.
The Englishman lost to Wilson the first time they played each other back in 2018 but has enjoyed victory on each of the five occasions they’ve crossed paths since.
The two other ties in the same section also pit a couple of the higher seeds against a pair of proven winners who have slipped a little down the rankings of late.
John Higgins meets Tom Ford while Northern Irishman Mark Allen takes on maximum man Thepchaiya Un-Nooh after edging Hossein Vafaei by the odd frame on Tuesday.
It will be important for Allen to start performing well in ranking events as his provisional status to qualify automatically for the World Championship at the end of the season is not good.
In the top half of the draw, meanwhile, reigning Wuhan Open champion Xiao Guodong remains fully in contention for a repeat triumph.
The 36 year-old will welcome the ranking points after opting to skip the lucrative Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters in favour of representing China at the World Games, where he won a gold medal.
Xiao, who like Un-Nooh has compiled a 147 break in this year’s edition of the event, will play Matthew Selt after the latter safely dispatched of three-time ranking event winner Marco Fu.
Elsewhere, Barry Hawkins and Zhang Anda entertain up-and-coming young talents in the form of Stan Moody and Aaron Hill.
Moody, incidentally, broke the so-called ‘Ding Curse’ whereby the conqueror of Ding Junhui had gone on to lose their very next game at every event since early-2024.
The 18 year-old beat Ding on Monday and then thrashed Zhou Yuelong 5-1 to impose an overdue halt to the bizarre hex at 22 events.
The remaining match in the last 16 is arguably the best with a battle of Marks on the cards between Williams and Selby.
Selby boasts a narrowly superior head-to-head advantage from their overall head-to-head record with 22 wins to 18, but their prior fixtures at this stage of a tournament have resulted in five victories apiece.
2025 Wuhan Open draw
Round of 16 (bo9)
Wednesday, 7am UTC+1 (BST)
Xiao Guodong vs Matthew Selt
Barry Hawkins vs Stan Moody
Mark Williams vs Mark Selby
Zhang Anda vs Aaron Hill
Wednesday, 12:30pm UTC+1 (BST)
Judd Trump vs Gary Wilson
Tom Ford vs John Higgins
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh vs Mark Allen
Si Jiahui vs Stephen Maguire
Click here to view the full updated draw (snooker.org)
Featured photo credit: WST
