NEWS  04-18-2006 IBP Italien Open – Majid wins the title

The second stop of the IBP Eurotour 2006 was played in Monfalcone, Italy and not less than 240 players had enrolled for the competition. Since this was the last tournament before the nominations fo the 9-Ball world Championships in November 2006, many players were seeking their last chance to jump on the WC train to Manila.

I had a walk-through in round 1 and then had to play against the new hope of Italy, Bruno Muratore. Until 3-6, I was trailing all the time and could not equal the score. Then, Muratore made two consecutive mistakes and I levelled the score. In the meantime, my break came back, allowing me to construct my game instead of playing push-outs upon each and every break. I won 9-6 and entered the next round against Uwe Kaiser from Germany. At the beginning, he played well, but committed mistakes all over the match and finally could not help his 2-9 defeat. In the match for the direct qualification for the final round of 32 players in a single KO bracket, I had to play another German player, Jakob Belka. I won 9-4 and was not even very much challenged, since my opponent made a series of unnecessary mistakes.

In the KO bracket, the draw made me play Albin Ouschan jr from Austria, who made me suffer. At the beginning, I was trailing and had to wait for mistakes by my opponent which finally happened. A scratch when playing the position for the 9 ball at 5-4 was the turning point. I took control and went off to lead 8-4. The young Austrian player scored one more rack before I finally won 9-5. In the round of the last 16 players, I was opposed to Sandor Tot, who now plays again for his home country Serbia-Montenegro. At 1-0, the cue ball fell upon my break and one rack later, I played a bad position on the 7 ball, the second last ball on the table. Instead of 3-0, the score was now 1-2 and I ran after this score throughout the match. The next four breaks, I could pocket at least one ball, but could not see a single time the next object ball. With push-outs and rail shots, I tried my best, but finally I lost the match in a rather unfortunate way 5-9, without wanting to talk Tot’s performance down. Once again, I could not do better than the 9^th rank at the Eurotour, but I climbed on the overall ranking from rank 10 to rank 8.

In the quarter-finals, Tot was eliminated by a Thomas Engert (GER) in great shape 7-9. Here are the scores of the semi-finals:
Thomas Engert (GER) – Sven Pauritsch (GER)   9-4
Niels Feijen (NED) – Imran Majid (GBR)   5-9

In the final, as for the two semi-finals before, I acted as the commentator for the company Kozoom. Together with Daryl Peach (GBR), I commented all three matches in the final arena,5 minutes away from the billiards centre Blackball Billiards, where these three matches were played. The British player, who had lost the three semi-finals he had reached before, started like a whirlwind and took a rapid 3-0 lead. He did not show the slightest doubt during the match and displayed a stunning energy to win. His break was more successful than the one of Engert, was twice rather lucky and made less mistakes than his German opponent. Finally, Majid deserved to win 9-4 and to win his first title at the Eurotour.