Snooker: Stephen Hendry humbles John Higgins Published on Sunday 29 April 2012 00:59 STEPHEN Hendry completed a crushing 13-4 victory over John Higgins yesterday, winning the one frame required to reach the quarter-finals of the Betfred.com World Championship. The seven-times champion's long-awaited first Crucible encounter with his fellow Scot, a four-time winner in Sheffield, failed to live up the expectation that it would be close. Higgins played perhaps the worst session of his career on Friday night to gift it 7-1 to Hendry, who had already been 5-3 in front after a tighter morning eight frames. And armed with a 12-4 lead, there was no way Hendry was going to lose when the game resumed yesterday. Higgins looked nicely set to take the opening frame yesterday afternoon but missed a pink, and a break of 64 from Hendry left last year's champion needing a snooker. Surprisingly, perhaps, Higgins played on, with professional pride kicking in. But he could not find the snooker he required and, when he left a red on, Higgins offered his hand in defeat. Hendry now plays another Scot, Stephen Maguire, in the last eight. World No.23 Hendry admitted the one-sided nature of the match, and particularly the middle session, had surprised him. He said: "Last night [Friday] was probably one of the strangest sessions of snooker I've played at the Crucible. I'm fortunate in the fact John's probably not played as bad in his life at the Crucible. You feel lucky if you get one or two chances against John in a frame. I was getting at times four, five or six chances in a frame. And at times I was coming to the table in shock and not really knowing what to do because it was weird. If someone said I would beat John Higgins 13-4 I would say they were nuts before. I fully expected him to come out last night with all guns blazing. When his back's against the wall he plays normally his best snooker. So I was expecting a really big session, and really my goal last night was to hopefully have a lead still going into the final session or else be very, very close. In the end it just turned into a weird session of snooker. Higgins said: "I have no idea what happened last night. Stephen was very good in the balls, and looked back to his best especially in the first session. I probably have played worse, but this place can do that to you. I have seen it, it can give you your best moments but also your worst nightmares. Even with how bad I was feeling I thought if I could get to 10-6 I had a chance, but I missed a pink and at 11-4 I knew it was over. "You watch other matches and players and think "How did they miss that?," but when you're out there and it's going wrong you can see it coming. Everything was hard or difficult, even simple positional shots. It's a hard thing, a tough place when you're going through turmoil. Earlier Maguire held off Joe Perry to seal his quarter-final place. The Glasgow potter won 13-7 against his English opponent to set up the match with Hendry. Maguire had been 11-5 overnight, but dropped the opening two frames when they resumed, giving Perry some hope that he would be able to force a close finish. That was soon extinguished though, and 31-year-old Maguire reached the last-eight stage for the fourth time in his career. Maguire said: "I think I finished the match yesterday really by winning the second session 7-1. Even if it had gone 12-8, I'd have had to have fallen over to lose five frames on the spin. I played OK in the first two sessions. I think Joe was in in every single frame, so I wouldn't say I played well.