Mark Allen surged into the second round of the Masters, and then revealed the big changes he’s made to his game working with Lee Walker.
The Pistol breezed beyond Chinese youngster Si Jiahui 6-2 to set up a quarter-final clash with Mark Selby at Alexandra Palace, and looked back to his best in front of a sell out crowd of more than 2,000 in London. And speaking to the BBC’s Ken Doherty afterwards, the Northern Irishman revealed that he had made big changes to his game after stinging criticism over slow play at snooker‘sUK Championships last year.
Allen had previously said that he “didn’t care” when he was slammed by former world champion, Shaun Murphy after a gruelling five-hour 6-5 semi-final defeat to Barry Hawkins in York, where his average shot time was an uncharacteristic 31.5 seconds. But he’s performed a U-turn on the comments, revealing he worked with Mark Williams’ coach Lee Walker to bring the speed back to his play.
Allen told the BBC: “I’m still playing what me and Lee worked on, even though we aren’t working together anymore. I’m just trying to do it quicker. Probably trying to do it more on the practice table and then using it out there. I don’t know how it looks, but it feels a bit better. I was fed up playing really long winded matches, even when I was winning it just wasn’t fun, that’s not the way I want to play.
“Don’t get me wrong, if I start losing in the first round all the time then I’ll have to change something. But at the minute it seems to be working. I never wanted to play the way that I was, I just felt it was the only way I could win because I wasn’t playing well enough.”
Allen produced an almost flawless showing to see off 22-year-old Chinese prodigy Si on his Masters debut, and relished playing in front of the packed crowd, adding: “I played well, I missed one or two shots in the whole game, it just felt like I got the better of the safety side of it. He’s such a dangerous player, you need to keep him tight and I thought I did that.”