Michael Holt Beats Kyren Wilson to Reach Shenzhen Open Last Eight
Twenty-two months ago Kyren Wilson ended Michael Holt's run at the UK Championship, 6–3 in the 2024 quarter-finals. On Thursday at the Shenzhen Open, Holt got his own back. He beat Wilson 5–2 in the last 16 and plays a ranking quarter-final again on Friday.
Holt is 48 and came to Shenzhen as the 51st seed. In three days he has knocked out the 11th seed, the 18th and the 8th. It is his first win over Wilson since the Northern Ireland Open in November 2020, and it trims Wilson's lead in their head-to-head to 10–6.
How the Wilson match turned
The first frame set the tone. Wilson made a 54 and still lost it, 72–65. Holt followed with a 126 in the second and a 54 in the third to lead 3–0.
Wilson came back the way a top-eight player does. An 80 won him the fourth frame and he took the fifth 79–0, so at 3–2 the match was open again. Holt shut it with two breaks of 84. Wilson scored three points in those last two frames.
Across the seven frames Holt outscored Wilson 470 to 239.
Three seeds, three different matches
The run has not been one long hot streak. Each match asked a different question.
Against Xiao Guodong on Tuesday, Holt lost the first two frames 63–28 and 74–1. He won five of the next seven, including a decider he took 76–28 without needing a big break. A slow start and a scrappy finish, and he was through.
Against Thepchaiya Un-Nooh on Wednesday he did not drop a frame. Holt scored 442 points to Un-Nooh's 78 and made breaks of 60, 67, 62 and 54. None of them was a century, and none needed to be. It also squared an account from March, when Un-Nooh beat him 5–1 in the last 32 of the World Open.
Against Wilson he needed both: the heavy scoring early, and the nerve to close after Wilson's two-frame reply.
Even getting to Shenzhen took a decider. Holt beat Ross Muir 5–4 in qualifying in Leicester in July.
Why this one stands out
Holt has reached the last 32 of ranking events twice before this season and lost both without winning a frame: 5–0 to Daniel Wells at the Wuhan Open in August, and 4–0 to Zhao Xintong at the British Open in September. In Shenzhen's main draw he has won 15 frames and lost six.
Look further back and the pattern holds. We hold 44 of his matches from June 2025 onwards, and Thursday's was the first in a last 16. His best results last season were last-32 defeats: 6–4 to Wu Yize at the UK Championship and 5–1 to Un-Nooh at the World Open.
For a player who was on the amateur Q Tour three years ago, that context matters. In November 2024, after reaching the UK Championship last 16, Holt said that a year earlier he had been preparing for Q Tour Event 5 in Brighton, which he won. His one ranking title remains the 2020 Shoot Out, a one-frame final against Zhou Yuelong.
What the form table shows
Our Form Rating, which weighs every result by the strength of the opponent, had Holt 33rd among the 184 players we track on 27 September. After three wins over seeded players he is 20th, a climb of 13 places in four days. Most of it came from the Un-Nooh and Wilson wins, both against players rated above him. Strip the rating out and the scorelines say the same thing: this is the best week he has had in at least 15 months.
Next: Yuan Sijun or Zak Surety
Holt's quarter-final on Friday is against the winner of tonight's match between Yuan Sijun and Zak Surety. He has a recent result against one of them: he beat Yuan 6–3 in the UK Championship qualifiers last November.
The quarter-finals are best of nine, the semi-finals on Saturday best of 11 and the final on Sunday best of 19. The winner takes £177,000.
Earlier in the week the event lost Zhao, John Higgins, Mark Williams and Ding Junhui, all of them in deciders. Holt has avoided that fate twice already, and he is two wins from his first ranking final since he won the 2020 Shoot Out.