Hendry records his first victory of Premier League season - 24/09/2009

[h]Neil Robertson 1-5 Stephen Hendry[/h]

Robertson's scores first
32-69 (Hendry 60), 1-99 (Hendry 98), 78-4 (Robertson 32), 19-52, 10-58 (Hendry 51), 1-133 (Hendry 127)

STEPHEN Hendry recorded his first victory of the 2009 PartyCasino.com Premier League Snooker.

Hendry recorded the biggest win of this season's competition so far when he triumphed 5-1 over Australian Neil Robertson in Southampton.

Breaks of 60, 98, 51 and 127 helped seven-time World Champion Hendry to a convincing victory.

Hendry's run of 127 in the final frame was also the highest break of this years's event and meant he collected £6,000 from his night's work.

"At the beginning and at the end of the match I played very well," said Hendry. "There were a couple of bad shots that I played in the middle frames but apart from that I was very happy with the way I played.

"When you have a 2-0 lead you have to be confident that you will get a point. I lost last week and if I had lost two in a row then it would've been tough to get back from that."

The first match of the third round of matches was between Australian Neil Robertson and seven-time World Champion Stephen Hendry.

Both men played Judd Trump in their opening ties in the 2009 PartyCasino.com Premier League Snooker competition. However, they had varying fortunes as Robertson won 4-2, before Hendry lost by a similar margin, despite going 2-0 ahead.

Robertson had two chances in the opening frame but he missed after making 15 before Hendry moved 60 ahead. However, Robertson had another chance but did not capitalise as he missed a pink to gift Hendry the first.

A missed blue at the start of the second from Hendry was not punished as Robertson soon passed control of the table back to the Scot. This time Hendry took full advantage with a break of 98, although a missed pot on the yellow denied Hendry another £1,000, which he would have got for a century break.

The third frame was one of the scrappiest of the competition so far with players missing pots and playing poor positional efforts. But Robertson clinched it after scores of 18, 19 and 32.

Both players were nowhere near their best but Hendry, who had a potting percentage of 93 per cent but still last last week, claimed the fourth to seal his first point of this year's competition.

The highest break in a nervous fourth frame was only 15 from Hendry. The frame was summed up near the end when Robertson potted a red but also went in-off. That prompted commentator Willie Thorne to describe the effort as 'one of the worst shots I've ever seen'.

Robertson had a three-point lead in the fifth but a missed shot on the green proved to be his last shot of the frame as Hendry's 51, his third half-century of the match, gave him a guaranteed victory.

He ensured a 5-1 success by claiming a 127 break - the highest of this year's tournament so far - to move to the top of the league. There was also a good piece of sportsmanship earlier in the frame when Robertson called a foul on himself but he nudged the red before hitting his desired pink ball.