Drago among winners in Shanghai qualifiers

The 46-year-old from Malta won his first round match at the World Snooker Academy to set up a meeting with Michael White and move to within three victories of securing a place at September's tournament in China.

Others to post opening wins included Liam Highfield, Rod Lawler and Luca Brecel.

Qualifying runs from Tuesday to Friday, with eight places on the flight to China up for grabs at the end of four rounds of play.

Round one results:

Hossein Vafaei Ayouri 0-5 Thanawat Tirapongpaiboon

Chen Zhe 4-5 Scott Donaldson

Paul Davison 2-5 Aditya Mehta

Craig Steadman 3-5 Luca Brecel

Jamie O'Neill 4-5 Tony Drago

Ian Burns 5-1 Pankaj Advani

Liam Highfield 5-3 Zhang Anda

David Grace 5-2 Michael Leslie

Robbie Williams 5-0 Floyd Ziegler

Sam Baird 2-5 Ben Judge

Martin O'Donnell 4-5 Fraser Patrick

Rod Lawler 5-0 Gareth Allen

Daniel Wells 1-5 Thepchaiya Un-Nooh

Sean O'Sullivan 4-5 Tian Pengfei

Kurt Maflin w/o Mohamed Khairy

Joel Walker 0-5 Cao Yupeng