No joy for Cork's Aaron Hill in German Masters snooker qualifier

CORK snooker ace Aaron Hill was defeated at Milton Keyes in the BetVictor German Masters qualifiers. 

The young cue master went down to a 5-0 defeat to world number 30 Liang Wenbo.

As Wenbo booked his place in the German Masters championship in Berlin in January, this was a real learning curve for Hill who was up against one of the brightest stars in the game.

The Cathedral Road native will have to shake this defeat off fast as he takes on Jackson Page from Wales on Monday evening at 7pm in the Northern Ireland Open, also at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keyes.

Hill got frame one off to a good start here with an opening 44 break, but Wenbo got his chance and showed his class with a clearance of 80 to take the first frame in the best of nine frames format.

Wenbo, who had defeated the in-form Ken Doherty 5-2 on Wednesday, was always going to be a tough proposition. To his credit, Hill plays the table, not the occasion, and was a threat throughout the match.

Wenbo was powerful in the second frame with an opening 44 break, Hill got in but the break broke down on 12 and Wengbo knocked in another decent break to lead the match 2-0 after just 35 mins.

Again in frame three Hill just couldn’t get going and like the first frame, he paid the penalty with just two reds left on the table and suddenly on the hour mark the Cork snooker ace was under all kinds of pressure.

Wenbo took the fourth frame with an impressive 99 break and put himself in the driving seat with a 4-0 lead at the interval and Hill had to come back into the Marshall Arena and win all the remaining five frames for victory.

Wenbo wrapped it up in the fifth frame with a 92 break to deny Hill a place in Berlin.