Steve Davis failed to bring his Welsh Open form into the Masters at Wembley tonight and suffered an opening match defeat against Ken Doherty.
Davis played superbly to reach the final in Cardiff 10 days ago before losing agonisingly 9-8 to Ronnie O'Sullivan. However, the six times world champion turned in a far from vintage performance against Doherty and slipped to a 6-3 defeat.
Indeed, Davis was just a couple of balls away from a 6-1 beating before he staged a mini revival to put the Dubliner under pressure.
Davis, who captured the last of his Masters crowns in 1997, fluked the brown in frame seven before clearing blue to black to keep the match alive. He was 44-0 down in the eighth frame but clawed his way back to 5-3 and then had chances to put more pressure on the twice Wembley runner-up.
Instead, Doherty knocked in the second last red and cleared the pink to set-up a quarter-final against Ronnie O'Sullivan.
"Sometimes games can turn on a fluke," said Doherty. "At that stage I wasn't too worried because I still had five chances to win the match. But if it gets back to 5-4 anything can happen so I was really pleased with my break in the last frame.
"I would have preferred to have won 6-1. Sometimes it can be good to have tough matches but then again I've often come out on the wrong end of those type of match.
"Steve is still a force to be reckoned with and it's always an inspiration playing against him. Hopefully I can go on as long as him. Steve has had a great career and it's still not over."