The next round was back on the winner’s side and featured Mika Immonen against Shane Van Boening. The famous SVB break wasn’t quite there today, but he still cleared Immonen 11-7. John Schmidt wasted no time in beating Bryan Farah 11-2 as Lee Van Corteza beat Chen-Yu Chang 11-3.
Max Eberle helped his Mosconi Cup hopes by putting down Skyler Woodward 11-6 and Thorsten Hohmann mowed the tall grass by besting Ko Pin-Yi 11-7. Another match worth noting was World #1 Joshua Filler taking down Ruslan Chinakhov 11-9. Filler has gained quite a fan base this week for his honor at the table. He called a foul on himself that no one else saw on Monday and then called himself on an illegal break yesterday. Two very close matches worth noting were Darren Appleton escaping from Kenny Cheng 11-9 while Denis Grade nipped David Alcaide 11-10.
Our third round of the day found Alex Pagulayan in form as he ran over Marco Teutscher 11-3. Ko Ping-Chung got by Kai Lin Hsu 11-9 and Jayson Shaw managed to catch a gear after he and Quac Hoang Duong were tied at 8 and Shaw took control to win 11-8. James Aranas had a great match where he destroyed defending champion Chang Jung-Lin 11-3 and Tommy Kennedy blasted Maxim Dudanets 11-5.
John Morra defeated Petri Makkonen 11-4 and Alex Kazakis continued his fine week taking off Fedor Gorst 11-7. Finally, Justin Martin just slid by Niels Feijen 11-10 and Dennis Orcollo edged Corey Duel 11-10 when Deuel hung the 5 in the corner on his way to clear the final rack.
There were only five matches on the one loss side at 6:30, and the feature match was Aloysius Yapp vs Ko Pin-Yi. Readers might want to remember the name of Aloysius Yapp. The Singapore native has had a great week here in Norfolk. First he beat the younger Ko brother Ko Ping-Han and then tonight on the TV table he had to take on the older Ko, one of the few players who can claim two World Championships in the same year.
Yapp was not concerned though. He went out and played flawless pool and dominated Pin-Yi throughout the match. He took an early lead and just kept stretching it out farther and farther. In the end he was leading 10-5 when Ko tried to draw for position on the 9 ball and drew his rock into the corner pocket, giving Yapp ball-in-hand on the 9 for the 11-5 victory. Yes, Yapp should be a name in this game for years to come.
In other matches, Ruslan Chinahov beat Lin Ta-Li 11-4 in a match that wasn’t even that close, and Roberto Gomez lost to Nick Ekonomolous. Gomez had a very vocal cheering section this week, but they had very little opportunity to make any noise as he quietly dropped his match to Ekonomopolous 11-4.
The 8:30 round eliminated another thirteen players with Chris Melling, John Schmidt, Ralf Souquet, Tommy Kennedy, Petri Makkonen and US young gun Justin Martin all dropping matches.
The final round of play on Wednesday featured four matches on the winner’s side. While last year’s runner-up Ko Ping-Chung was beating BCA Hall of Famer Alex Pagulayan on the feature table, Austria’s Max Lechner and Shane Van Boening were putting on a show on one of the outer tables. Lechner had already gotten the attention of the crowd in Norfolk with his 11-4 opening match win over Skyler Woodward. The fan’s hadn’t seen anything yet though. Lechner held an early 2-0 lead over Van Boening when he ran six straight racks for an 8-0 lead. He extended that lead to 9-0, before Shane started doing what he does. Van Boening started creeping back into the match and although Lechner had opportunities at the table, he wasn’t able to capitalize on them. Nine racks later, the score was tied at 9-9 and every eyeball in the room was glued to this match. Van Boening took the hill first at 10-9, but Lechner dug down deep and took control of his nerves to tie the score at 10-10 with him breaking. The break turned out to be very important as Lechner broke the balls and watched along with the standing room only crowd as the 9-ball made a beeline to the corner pocket, giving Lechner the 11-10 win.
Lechner now joins Ko, Dennis Orcollo and Jayson Shaw in the final eight on the winner’s side. The other four players in that round will be determined Thursday morning.
Matches began on day two of the International 9-Ball Open Tuesday at 10:30 AM and the featured match was between 3 time VNEA National Champion Danny Olson and European Mosconi Cup member Alex Kazakis. The match went back and forth until the score was 4-4 and then Kazakis caught a gear that took him to a 10-5 lead, needing only one more rack for the win. Olson then found his momentum and soon brought the score to 10-8, but the comeback was not to be. In the final rack Olson stumbled on the three ball and Kazakis ran the rack for the win. Another match of note was between our defending champion Jung-Lin Chang and Che-Wei Fu. This one saw Fu controlling the first half of the match and Chang fighting back in the second half. It came down to a nail-biting double-hill finish with Chang sinking the final ball for the win.
The second round saw Alex Pagulayan using his pixie dust on Josh Roberts for an 11-4 victory while Ko Ping-Chung got past Brandon Shuff 11-5. Meanwhile, Ping-Chung’s younger brother Ping-Han was gathering experience playing Dennis Orcollo on the TV table. Experience is all he would earn as Orcollo took him down 11-6. Chris Robinson shot an amazing match to overpower Naoyuki Oi 11-4 and Marco Teutscher won over Wu Kun Lin 11-8.
Coming back from the dinner break, play shifted to the winner’s side and the arena was filled with marquee matches. On the TV table, Nikos Ekonomopolous faced Lee Van Corteza. The match changed complexion in a hurry at 5-4 Ekonomopolous when he won a rack, broke the 9-ball and then shot an early 9-ball in the next rack. Suddenly, it was 8-4. Corteza fought back to 9-8, but couldn’t get over the hump as Ekonopolous won the match 11-9.
The comeback of the day belonged to Vietnam’s Nguyen Phuc Long against Niels Feijen. Feijen looked to be cruising to an easy win at 7-2, when things turned in Nguyen's favor. Nguyen combined a couple of good rolls with a four pack to keep Feijen in his chair as he won nine straight racks for the 11-7 win.
Play then shifted back to the one loss side to finish out the night. The 8:30 round saw very little as far as surprises with Albin Ouschan, Naoyuki Oi, Donny Mills, Billy Thorpe and Roberto Gomez all advancing. One other match of note saw Aloysius Yapp hand the youngest Ko brother, Ping Han, his second loss in a row and eliminating him from the event.
The final match of the night featured Skyler Woodward against an unusually subdued Earl Strickland. Having just faced each other in a challenge match earlier this month, both players were familiar with each other’s games. The players battled to 9-9 before Woodward notched the win to eliminate Strickland. Other players being eliminated at night’s end were Tyler Styer, Poland’s Wiktor Zielinski, Ernesto Dominguez and Frankie Hernandez.
The draw for the 43rd US Open 9-Ball Championship has been made, with Jayson Shaw to begin his defense against Marcus Weston at Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas on Sunday, April 21.
The draw was seeded with a golf-style category system adopted, which took in rankings from across the pool world including WPA World Ranking, BCA Standings and Fargo Rating. As defending champion Shaw was seeded No.1, while five-time US Open champion Shane Van Boening is seeded second as the highest ranked American player.
Broadcast details for the 2019 US Open 9-Ball Championship will be announced shortly. Live rack-by-rack scoring will be available throughout the event at www.matchroompool.com thanks to Matchroom Multi Sport’s partnership with CueScore.
Note: Should any players featured in the draw not participate in the event, they will be replaced directly by the first player on the event waiting list to accept a spot in the tournament, irrespective of where the new player would have featured in any seeding category.
All matches at the US Open 9-Ball Championship takes place April 21-26 at Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas. Matches are race to 11, winner breaks, except the final which is race to 13. The draw and match schedule for the first stage of the tournament is available now at www.matchroompool.com.
Tickets for the 43rd US Open 9-Ball Championship are still available at www.matchroompool.com from as little as $10 with VIP packages also available for the final three days of the tournament.
The tournament will be split into two stages with the full field playing double elimination down to the final 16 from Sunday April 21st until Tuesday April 23rd across multiple tables. From Wednesday April 24th until Friday April 26th the final 16 players will play straight knockout in the TV Arena in front of a global television audience.
The 24 years old Albin Ouschan of Austria has just won his first big tournament of his career. Albin Ouschan overpowered the Canadian top player John Morra (CAN) with 11:8 and obtained the crown of the 2015 China Open.
John Morra did not have smooth sailing in the tournament. To the contrary, he lost his first match with Vietnamese Do Thekien 5:7. And had to make his way through the loser’s side. He came up with an impressing performance, overcame Marc Bijsterbosch (NED) 11:8, Warren Kiamco (PHI) 11:9, Fu Jianbo (CHN) 11:10 and Nick Van Den Berg of Netherlands with 11:8, booked a seat in the final match with Albin Ouschan.
Ouschan’s first match played against Jalal Yousef from Chile. Ouschan ended up well, and defeated Yousef with 9:6. In the next match, Ouschan played Che-Wei Fu from Taiwan, both players played solid, however, Fu played a bit better, Ouschan lost 8:9 in the end.
Then Ouschan faced the Filipino player Johann Chua, it was a really tough match with ups and downs for Ouschan. At 7:7, Chua made a big mistake which put Ouschan in the lead, and won the match with 9:7 to qualified for the last 32.
His first match in the single elimination had to deal with Ping-Chung Ko (TPE). In the match, Ko had problems with the break, in which he always got the white kicked out of position, on the other side, Ouschan’s break was almost perfect and ran out his racks, and his safety was also good, Ouschan took down Ko with 11:7.
Then he against Mateusz Sniegocki from Poland which Ouschan was 3:7 down, then everything seems turned lucky for him, and he closed the book on the match to win with 11:8. And Ouschan continued to made his way with victories over Lee Vann Corteza 11:6.
In the semifinals, Ouschan met a young Chinese 8-ball player Chu Bingjie, both players are played absolutely perfect and run out about 6 racks each, nevertheless, Ouschan was always 1 or 2 racks behind Chu until at 8:8, Ouschan played two perfect jump shot to make it to the final, send Chu Bingjie home with 11:8.
The championship match could be the youngest final ever between the two. In rack 7, jumped the 1-ball, a lucky combo 9 put Ouschan to get a 5:2 lead over Morra, and then two of them run out every rack to 10:7.
Although Morra extends the match by winning his breaking rack, Albin was the more consistent player when he ran out the 19th rack to win the champion with 11:8.
“I feel just great! Still can’t believe what I did that all the hard work finally paid off! One of the happiest days in my life!” said Albin after the match.
With this victory, Albin Ouschan becomes the youngest-ever China Open Champion. And probably be the new World No.1 in the rankings.
Thorsten Hohmann had an impressive run in late summer. He’ll be one to watch in 2014 for sure!
The shrinkage that pro pool underwent in 2013 was perhaps forecast by the WPBA. In 1993 the WPBA had seventeen professional events. By the end of the decade they were a fixture on ESPN and the best women in the world were coming to America to be part of the growing feminine pool scene. The men were often chastised for not just following in the footsteps of the women. They were on TV, they had big-money sponsors, they had a real tour with real money and the future was looking bright. In 2003 they had eight events and they were all on ESPN. The following year they went up to eleven events and most of them were televised as well. But in 2005 Brunswick pulled up and that brought the beginnings of trouble. By 2010 the Tour was down to three events and it stayed down thee until 2013 when it went down to just two. Both of those, Soaring Eagle Masters and the Ultimate 10-Ball Championships were won by Ga-Young Kim. The WPBA website calendar for 2014 lists two events for 2014. One is not a pro event, the Regional Tour Championships, but the other one is and that is the Soaring Eagle Masters in February. We are told there are several other events in the planning stages and we will let you know when we receive details.
One player who will look back upon 2013 with a smilie is Thorsten Hohmann. Hohmann’s game intensified to the point he looked unbeatable, and for a while there he was. Between the middle of August and the end of September Hohmann won four consecutive major pro events. He won the Accu-Stats 14.1 Invitational, the World Tournament of 14.1, the Maryland 14.1 Championships and, just to show he is not mono-disciplined, he crowned the run with a World Championship when he won the WPA World 9-Ball Championship. Hohmann had a very consistent year. He enjoyed fifteen top-ten finishes and ended it with a win at the Kremlin Cup.
Other events of note in 2013 included the move of the CSI US Bar Box Championships to the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno. As with many CSI events this one goes out of the way to be inclusive as it has 8-Ball and 9-Ball and 10-Ball events for both Men and Women as well as an Open division.
In May the Worlds elite players met in Shanghai for the China Open. Lee Vann Corteza pocketed $40,000 for that win over Che-Wei Fu and in the Women’s Division Sha-Sha Liu grabbed $30,000 for her victory over Siming Chen.
Every four years we have the World Games where pool gets as close to the Olympics as it has ever gotten. This year the event was held in Cali, Colombia in late July. Chieh-Yu Chou of Chinese Taipei won the Gold medal in the Women’s Division with a squeaky 9-8 victory over Ga-Young Kim. The Men’s Crown fell to Darren Appleton by the same narrow margin as he got past Jung-Lin Chang 11-10. Marco Zanetti took the Gold for Caroms and Aditya Metha became the Snooker Champion.
September grabbed our attention with the World Cup of Pool. This doubles-format event is produced by Matchroom Sport and it is a very popular event in those countries where it is aired live on TV. This year Team Philippines consisting of Dennis Orcollo and Lee Vann Corteza snapped off Team Holland of Niels Feijen and Nick Van Den Berg to split the $60,000 first prize. This event, as with all the Matchroom events, is not afraid of being a bit different. This year they awarded $500 to the team of Karl Boyes and Darren Appleton for being the ‘Best Dressed’ team!
Niels Feijen had taken down fourth place at the U.S. Open and he was hungry for a win. He found it at the World Pool Masters when he bested Darren Appleton 8-6 in the final to claim the $20,000 first place prize. It is fitting that this was the crown he took as he and his teammate Nick Van Den Berg had come in second only weeks before in another Matchroom showpiece, the World Cup of Pool. With is year-end win at the Mosconi Cup, he added yet another Matchroom trophy to his collection when he was awarded the prestigious 20th Mosconi Cup MVP award. The 'Terminator' showed his place is on the big stage once and for all.
The Women’s World Ten Ball Championship was held once again in Manila and this time a home-town girl grabbed the honors. Rubilen Amit defeated the very formidable Kelly Fisher 10-8 to own the World Title. It was a very special moment for Amit to win in front of the home crowd and when the last ball dropped she actually jumped up into the arms of Kelly Fisher to celebrate. You have to love moments like that. Amit followed this up a few days later with another win in a Dragon Promotions event as she and her team of Captain Ga-Young Kim, Pei Chen Tsai and Siming Chen won the inagaural Queens Cup by beating the team of Allison Fisher, Kelly Fisher, Jasmin Ouschan and Vivian Villareal.
This year’s version of the longest-running event in pro pool, the All-Japan Open was won on the men’s side by Pin-Yi Ko while the Ladies winner was Akimi Kajitani.
…And 2013 folded it’s tent and went home. 2014 will be challenging for the professional game. But challenges present opportunities and perhaps this time the game can grab one that won’t slip away. Several different ‘Reality’ shows around pool are being talked up and there is the possibility that the professional game could be organized by a group that could provide leadership and care taking to help generate more events.
To say the least, 2014 will be ‘interesting’.
To read the previous parts of our 2013 Review, click on the following links:
Jung-Lin Chang and Kelly Fisher, WPA Players of the Year 2012
The WPA published its latest ranking today.
Jung-Lin Chang and Kelly Fisher are still leading after the recent China Open, where they were presented with their award for being WPA 2012 Players of the Year 2012.
The China Open winners Sha Sha Liu and Lee Vann Corteza rise up the rankings, With Liu gaining 3 spots to #2, and Corteza gaining 5 spots to #6.
Che-Wei Fu's final match appearance in Shanghai makes him jump to the second place, and Siming Chen stays at the third place.
The next event for the men's ranking will be Ultimate 10-Ball in three weeks time.
