|
|
|
NEWS October 9, 2006 IBP Swiss Open – The tournament of surprises |
|
|
|
At
the 6th event of the IBP Eurotour, 190 participants competed in the Island
Billards in Frauenfeld, Switzerland. Due to the limited number of tables,
the organisation could not accept more players. The matches started at
unsocial hours and to host more players, an additional day would have been
necessary. I would be very much in favour of such an additional day, since
even if the Eurotour has well developed and gets better from event to event,
it still resembles to a mass event and the quality of the events is a bit
suffering. This may sound a bit subjective, since I did not play
successfully in the Tour for the last two years, but there must also be a
reason for this lack of success. After
a walk-through in round one, I played my first match in the winners bracket
of group C against Angelos Chronas from Greece. The match was very balanced
and after some pretty aggressive actions of the young Greek, I could have
lost the match. Thanks to my experience, I finally managed to win 10-6. My
second match was against the Englishman Jonni Fulcher who lives in
Switzerland. Another balanced match and after 18 racks, the score was 9-9. I
had the last break and so the opportunity to win the match. But I missed a
kiss shot 3-9 and the 9 ball remained just in front of the pocket. Fulcher
could shoot the combination from the 3 on the 9 ball and won the match. In
the losers bracket I played match 4 against Frenchman Yannick Beaufils, whom
I knew from the IPT Tour. On the TV table, I won a straight match 10-3 and
was then opposed to the German Christian Reimering. Once more, it was a high
level match. Bad enough, I did not have the first break and was running
after the score – Christian was always leading by 2 or 3 racks. In rack
18, I had the possibility to equal the score at 9-9. My entry ball was just
perfect, but then I missed an easy 3 ball. I played with too much English
and in spite of a good performance, I was eliminated from the tournament
much too early with this 8-10 defeat. I ended on rank 49 and I dropped in
the overall ranking from rank 13 to 21.. Throughout
the tournament, all top players failed. It was surprising that none
of the Top 16 players reached the quarter-finals. The semi-finals: The
final went back and forth, with Fulcher leading all the time. He finally won
his first major title against the more experienced Drago. 1. Nick van den Berg (NED)
|
|
|
