Wallace wins ugly ahead of the NI Championship

TOO much time on the greens and not the green baize was one reason why Patrick Wallace described his latest Northern Ireland Ranking Tournament victory as his ‘worst’ ever.

The Dungannon cueman had excelled last time out at Daly’s in Derry where he beat Raymond Fry 5-1 in the final, having seen off Fergal Quinn 4-0 in the last four.

But during the recent good spell of weather, the 55-year-old admits he had been spending more time on his putting than his potting and that very nearly came back to bite him against Declan Lavery in last Sunday’s final in Antrim.

“I was being honest when I said I had been spending too much time on the golf course and not enough time on the practice table. I felt rusty,” he acknowledged.

“And then when you feel rusty and you come under pressure and you start to miss balls and you lose your confidence, it’s a complete downward spiral, but very fortunately for me, the same thing happened to Declan.

“He played OK to go 3-1 – I think he had a 50 and two 60s, so he wasn’t playing too badly before the interval but it just went really messy afterwards.”

With neither player able to produce the sort of form they are capable of, Wallace felt the final was the ‘worst worst’ ever in terms of the standard that was on show but that he was glad to be able to stay in control mentally in order to ‘win ugly’.

“It was the ‘worst worst’ final ever!, he said with a laugh. “It was really disappointing because after the final in Derry I was absolutely buzzing.

“Not only had I won, but I played really well. I played some of the best snooker I had played in a long time in the semi-finals and final and this was the exact opposite, it was some of the worst snooker I have played to win a tournament.

“But it just shows you, there are plenty of ups and downs in this game, especially when you get into your mid-50s!

“You have to be quite disciplined within yourself because it would be quite easy for somebody who is such a perfectionist like myself to throw the toys out of the pram because you keep missing chance after chance after chance. You have to remind yourself you’re there to do a job and try to win the match any way you can.

“I was chatting with a friend of mine, who came down to support me, on the way home and he said ‘you’re going to take an ugly win over a beautiful loss every day of the week’ and yesterday was certainly and ugly win, but I’ll take it!”

Patrick was back in action on Saturday when he reached the quarter-finals of the Northern Ireland Championship at the same Antrim venue where he was victorious a week earlier.

At the weekend, he defeated Alan McDonald 3-2, Brendan Coiley 3-1 and then fellow Dungannon man, Rory Mallon 4-2 in the last-16.

“Every match was very tough but Alan McDonald played unbelievably well to get back to 2-2, so I was pleased to play a very good decider and then the second match against Brendan Coiley was very tough as well. The matches were hard fought but then I played my good buddy, who I go back about 40 years with, Rory Mallon.

“We’ve had some good battles over the years and we had another one today (Saturday). It was another very close game and I ended up winning the last two frames to win 4-2 but Rory is some man. I don’t know how he does it.

“He’s practiced for an hour. He had a skiing accident at the start of January and has only practiced for an hour before turning up today and he won three matches and then he played very well against me. He’s a better man than me because if I hadn’t been practicing I wouldn’t be here.”

Patrick will take on Maurice McCusker in the last-eight. The pair have previous in the tournament with Patrick edging his opponent out in a tight first round deciding frame in 2018.

That match will be played on May 31st after the three remaining quarters of the draw are completed.