Former winner Luca Brecel has failed to qualify for the 2026 World Snooker Championship, losing to Wales’ Jak Jones in the last qualifying round.<\/p>\n
Brecel lifted the trophy at the Crucible in 2023, but will not be there this year as Jones, the 2024 runner-up, sealed a 10-5 victory at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield.<\/p>\n
Jones made five century breaks of 136, 100, 114, 114 and 132 on his way to securing a superb success.<\/p>\n
“I played quite well and this morning I felt really good, but this evening I felt shocking. But I managed to pull myself together and get over the line,” said Jones.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think I could play much better – it was probably the best I have played all season. I enjoy playing at the Crucible, you either love it or hate it and you can crumble, but I enjoy the atmosphere and it’s an unbelievable arena.”<\/p>\n
Two-time finalist Ali Carter won five frames in a row as he fought back from 7-5 behind to defeat Scotland’s Anthony McGill 10-7.<\/p>\n
“I just felt Anthony was playing with a lot of freedom and I had to stick with him as he could’ve got away from me,” said 46-year-old Carter, who will be playing at the Crucible for a 22nd year.<\/p>\n
England’s Liam Highfield, 35, only returned to the World Snooker Tour last year after he suffered a broken wrist in an e-scooter accident in 2023.<\/p>\n
Ranked 92nd, he had to win four qualifying matches and booked his spot with a convincing 10-2 victory over Oliver Lines.<\/p>\n
“Everything is on the up,” said Highfield, who lost in the first round at the Crucible in 2017, 2021 and 2022.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t make a bridge when I broke my wrist and it has been a long journey back and it’s quite emotional to be back.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know if I would ever get back there, hopefully my career is on an upwards curve from now on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former winner Luca Brecel has failed to qualify for the 2026 World Snooker Championship, losing to Wales’ Jak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-400686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}