{"id":24478,"date":"2026-02-23T19:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=24478"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:15:15","slug":"welsh-open-defending-champion-mark-selby-beaten-by-jiang-jung-in-first-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=24478","title":{"rendered":"Welsh Open: Defending champion Mark Selby beaten by Jiang Jung in first round"},"content":{"rendered":"


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It was an excellent first day for the Welsh players, as Jak Jones, Dylan Emery and Mark Williams all won their first-round matches.<\/p>\n

Jones took a comfortable 4-1 win over England’s Liam Highfield, while Emery shocked China’s Lei Peifan with a deciding-frame victory.<\/p>\n

Home favourite Williams – who was the last Welsh player to win the title back in 1999 – overcame Michael Holt to win 4-2 and set up a second-round match against Martin O’Donnell or Tom Ford.<\/p>\n

England’s Robbie Williams knocked out world number 16 Si Jiahui with a 4-2 win.<\/p>\n

He will face either last year’s runner-up and former Welsh Open winner Stephen Maguire or Ricky Walden in the second round.<\/p>\n

Barry Hawkins was forced to go the distance against fellow Englishman David Lilley, though the 12th seed came out on top with a 4-3 win, sealing his win with a 108 break in the decider.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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It was an excellent first day … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[251],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}