Alex Kazakis
The opening round of single elimination play at this year's Kremlin Cup hardly offered any big guns colliding, as those who qualified from the B side were drawn against undefeated qualifiers. Even with that, the first round of play still held some notable results, as Corey Deuel found himself up against rising Russian player Fedor Gorst. That match didn't last long, with Gorst eliminating Deuel by and 8-2 scoreline. Andrey Seroshtan ran into Thorsten Hohmann for the second year in a row, and for the second year in a row he pushed The Hitman all the way to hill-hill game. Unfortunately for the young Russian, he made a couple of errors which cost him the match again. Evgeny Stalev, trailing multiple European snooker and female champion Daria Sirotina 2-1, decided to withdraw from the tournament due to background noise, for the second year in a row.
The round of 16 was where the greats started to fall. Maksim Dudanets eliminated Mika Immonen, while Ruslan Chinakhov dealt with David Alcaide and Hohmann made quick work of Francisco Sanchez Ruiz allowing him only 3 racks. Ralf Souquet had a narrow escape from Denis Grabe winning by the smallest of margins, 8-7.
After all the dust settled there were last two men standing. The semifinals featured Alexandros Kazakis vs Dmitry Chuprou of Belarus and an all-German clash Hohmann vs Souquet. The Kaiser could have been on the edge in the quarterfinal against Dudanets but survived. In the semi he had a comfortable lead of 6-2 and all of a sudden he went cold and couldn't win a single rack from there. Hohmann managed to come up with a comeback and proceed edto the finals. Alex Kazakis disposed of Chinakhov earlier and Chuprou wasn't a match for the Greek as the latter advanced with 8-3.
In the end it was Kazakis who finished the 2016 Kremlin Cup 10-Ball without tasting defeat. The final match vs Hohmann went in favor of The Hitman early but at 6-6 the Greek - who carries a 10-Ball European championship under his belt from last year - won a vital rack. He extended his lead in the next and never looked back from there and on the match 9-6.
