Jimmy White defeated six-time Masters champion Stephen Hendry 6–4, in a match disrupted by noise from an over-enthusiastic partisan crowd that referee Colin Brinded had attempted to control. White won the first frame with a 54 break, but a fluke on a red ball in the second gave Hendry the impetus to win the next two frames with breaks of 97 and 75. White took the fourth frame to equalise the scoreline, until Hendry made his 632nd career century break (102) to win the fifth. White then made a clearance of 40, after Hendry missed a shot on the pink ball to a middle pocket in frame six, and White took the lead. A 36 clearance and a 51 break won him the match, his first against Hendry at the Wembley Conference Centre in seven attempts. After the match, White apologised to Hendry for the crowd's disrespectful behaviour; a female spectator had been ejected and escorted out of the arena by security after she ignored repeated warnings over disrupting the match. White also voiced a complaint about the playing conditions, and the WPBSA conducted a meticulous investigation of the table's mechanics on 4 February, to correct any imperfections prior to the start of the quarter-finals. In the last of the first round matches, Quinten Hann responded to an early century break from his opponent Peter Ebdon to take a 2–1 lead, but a playing error, in which Hann potted the cue ball from a screwback on the pink ball, allowed Ebdon to level the scoreline with a break of 55. They shared the next two frames, but Hann conceded the seventh after missing the final red ball, despite trailing by only 21 points in the frame. Edbon forged ahead, claiming the next two frames to win the match 6–3. At the post-match press conference, Hann put the decline in his performance down to hunger, which had lowered his concentration after the mid-session interval, "This wasn't the first time it's happened. I enjoy playing Peter but the game did drag on. I got some chocolate at the end but it was too little too late." The quarter-finals took place on 5 and 6 February 2004. Hunter took an early lead of 3–1 in the first quarter-final, but Williams then won four of the next five frames, with breaks of 66, 77, 52 and 101, to move 5–4 ahead. Williams looked set to win the match in frame ten with a 51–12 lead, but a strong ricochet off the top right-hand corner pocket sent the cue ball down the table and Hunter made a 65 clearance to force a final frame decider.