NEWS  January 23, 2007  8-Ball Battle of Scandinavia – Too tired to win…


 

For the first time, the 8-Ball Battle of Scandinavia was played in the Norwegian capital Oslo. Unfortunately and much to the despair of promoter Elbowroom, not too many players had enrolled for the event and so we played in 12 groups with 8 players in round robin format. And it became worse: some players did not show up, so some of the groups were only staffed with 6 or 7 competitors.

I won my first group match against Kjartan Maraas from Norway 5-1. In my next match against the Danish player Katrine Jensen, I had to struggle hard. The girlfriend of Niels Feijen played a great match and challenged me right until the end. After a strategical mistake by the Danish player, I could win the match 5-3. I also won my third group match against Tom Eksell from Sweden with the tight score of 5-4, however, I had missed several opportunities to win the match earlier. In my next match against Kevin Becker (GER), it seemed for long that I was going to lose the match, but I finally managed to win 5-4. In round five, I had to play against Robert Farinetti from Norway and won without too much trouble 5-2. In the last group match against tournament director Roy Steffensen (NOR), only the first rank in the group was at stake, since all group winners were already qualified fort he round of the last 32 players. Were also qualified the 4 best group runner-ups and all other players in the best four ranks of their groups would enter the round of the last 48 players. I could also win my last group match 5-1 and finished first of my group.

A new draw was made fort he KO bracket and the format changed to the best-of-five format with sets played in races to 3.

The top players were drawn into the lower quarter of the bracket and these matches could already have been the quarter-finals. I first played Englishman Imran Majid, and won clearly 3-0. Then, I faced the next Mosconi Cup team mate, Nick van den Berg (NED), who had eliminated Tom Storm. I a high level match, I entered the quarter-finals winning 3-2. My next opponent was again a Mosconi team mate, my colleague Thomas Engert (GER), who had previously eliminated Karl Boyes (ENG) and Thorsten Hohmann (GER). I had a bad start and lost the first two sets. Then, I finally found my game and started my come-back. In the decisive 5th set, I played very well and finally entered the semi-finals winning 3-2.

Since both semi-finals were played one after the other, I had a longer waiting period to overcome. Troubled by my jet lag from the USA, I grew more and more tired and consequently, I played very bad against Artem Koshovyy from Ukraine. I missed number of opportunities and finally lost 1-3. The Ukrainian player had not played very well, I had played very badly. I immediately travelled home during this night with a third rank in my suitcase. In the final, Derby City Classic winner Niels Feijen from the Netherlands won 3-2 against young Ukrainian Koshovyy and could celebrate his second title within just one week. Feijen had eliminated Englishman Mick Hill in the second semi-final.