Stephen Hendry, the seven times the world champion, anticipates a tough time at the new Bahrain championship next week, writes Neil Goulding.
The Scot has struggled to produce his best form this season, and his task is not made any easier having been drawn against the promising Ricky Walden in the first round of the ranking event.
Walden, the world No.35, defeated Ronnie O'Sullivan to win this season's Shanghai Masters, having beaten Hendry 5-4 on the way to his first ranking tournament title.
"He Walden is a very good player, it's not an easy match," said Hendry. "There really are no easy matches these days. You can't turn up for tournaments and be guaranteed a place in the quarter-finals. Ricky's beaten me this season and won a title."
Hendry, world ranked No.6, reached the semi-finals of last season's world championship but has not won a ranking title since the 2005 Malta Cup. He lost 5-1 to Stephen Lee in the second round of the Northern Ireland Trophy, to Walden in the first round in Shanghai and 5-2 to John Higgins at the Grand Prix in Glasgow.
"I've moved my practice table into my garage at home and I'm finding that's helping me," said Hendry. "Ihad a good win against Johnin the Premier League last week, which was good for confidence, but I'll have to play well because Ricky will be confident of beating me."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article