Shaun Murphy leads Barry Hawkins despite atrocious luck

Murphy was in superb form throughout his opening session, stealing the first with a 92 and then consistently staying ahead of Hawkins as he carved out his big lead.

Yet his 6-2 could have been an even bigger lead: in the fourth frame of the match, with Murphy leading 3-0, Hawkins came to the table and made a brilliant break to clear to the pink and stand on the edge of stealing the frame.

His positional shot on the black came up well short, however, and after he missed Murphy stepped up and drained a huge black at an acute angle to take a 4-0 lead.

That's how it seemed initially, however - but the crowd's applause for one of the shots of the tournament turned to gasps of disbelief as the white ball ran across the table and dropped into the middle pocket.

Neither Murphy nor Hawkins could believe it, but what seemed certain to be a 4-0 lead instead became 3-1 at the mid-session interval.

Murphy did not let it slow him down, however: he took three of the next four frames - with breaks of 105, 138 and 79 - to earn his 6-2 lead going into Friday's second session.

Shaun Mur0phy 6-2 Barry Hawkins

Judd Trump v Stuart Bingham