Mark Selby was considering retirement this time last year, but has a spring back in his step this season and started his Sportsbet.io Tour Championship campaign with a 10-6 defeat of Si Jiahui, setting up a quarter-final with Neil Robertson.
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Ding Junhui is also into the last eight, as he thrashed defending champion Mark Williams 10-3 to earn a tie with Kyren Wilson.
It was in Manchester a year ago that Selby lost to Gary Wilson in the opening round, describing his performance as "pathetic" and insisting "if I carry on playing like that, that will be it for me, for sure." Last summer he gave serious consideration to his future, but elected to keep playing, and that has proved the right decision as this season he has already won the Unibet British Open, BetVictor Championship League and BetVictor Welsh Open.
And the four-time Crucible king will set his sights on more silverware this week after a comfortable win over China's Si. He'll face Robertson on Wednesday night at 7pm, with the concluding session on Thursday evening.
Si trailed 6-2 after the first session but took the first two frames tonight to narrow the gap to 6-4, before Selby responded with a tremendous 136, the new front-runner for the £10,000 high break prize. Frame 12 came down to a long safety exchange on the final black, and Si cracked first as he left the black too close to a centre pocket and Selby clipped it in for 8-4.
After the interval, Si showed his break-building quality with a 125, missing the pink when he could have eclipsed Selby's target. The next two were shared then Si had a chance to close to 9-7, but missed the blue to a top corner when he led 58-30, and Selby punished him by clearing from the last red.
"I am practising more now and enjoying it more," said Selby. "Last year I wasn't putting the work in because I wasn't enjoying the game. I feel quietly confident now. To win two ranking titles makes it a good season. There are still some poor performances in there so I need to be more consistent. Overall I was happy with the way I played today but I know I'll need to improve against Neil, I'll have to cut out the silly mistakes."
Ding celebrated his 38th birthday in style with a superb display against Williams. From 3-3, the Chinese ace won seven frames in a row with breaks of 116, 78, 56, 56, 52, 78, 102 and 82 as he set up a quarter-final clash with World Champion Wilson on Thursday.
In November, Ding won the 15th ranking title of his career at the International Championship, and he is now through to the last eight of this event for the third consecutive year.
"I just played the table," said Ding, who won his first ranking title at the China Open 20 years ago. "The first few frames yesterday I was so bad. I just tried to score more points in each frame. I felt 70% or 80% tonight. Mark had chances at the start of the match. But tonight he was missing balls and left me chances. Hopefully I can play the way I want to against Kyren."
Williams was playing with contact lenses for the first time but admitted his is still struggling with his game and his eyesight. "The scoreline tells you all you need to know (about the contact lenses)," said the Welshman. "I will stick with them. But whoever qualifies for the World Championship will be praying they draw me in the first round. But Ding was very good, he outplayed me."