NEWS  November 13, 2007   WC 9-Ball – Daryl Peach is World Champion

For the second consecutive time, the 9-Ball World Championships were played in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. This time, the venue was the Araneta Coliseum in the district Quezon City, the arena where Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier fought the legendary „Thrilla in Manila“ on October 1st, 1975. With a capacity of 8000 seats, the arena was the perfect venue for the numerous spectators, excited as always on the Philippines.

The format was 16 groups with 8 players in double KO bracket playing in races to 9 with winner break. 2 players per group qualified in the winner and looser bracket for the final field of 64 players in KO format.

As runner-up of the last WC, I was seeded in group 2 on position 1 and had to play first a player issued from the qualifications. But as opposed to other sports, where a qualifier should normally be an easy draw, this is not always the case in billiards. The qualifiers, mostly players from Taiwan, the Philippines or other Asian countries, are strong enough to compete for a good result or even for the title. It would be nice if the organizers would take this into consideration, because it should be an advantage to be a seeded player and not the contrary.

So, with Leonardo Andam from the Philippines, I had a very difficult opponent to start with. After trailing 0-2, I could equal the score, but missed the lead when missing a 7 ball. I continued to trail and during the match, I missed another few opportunities. I finally lost 5-9 and was very early in the KO bracket, since from now on, only won matches would count. My next opponent was Bernard TC Kiat (SIN) and I played a bit better than before. Even if I missed again a few opportunities, I fought my way through the match and finally won 9-6.

Now, I had to win the decisive match against the Canadian player Ronnie Wiseman. I started well and took a quick 5-0 lead. After leading 6-1 and 7-3, I won the match 9-3 shortly after midnight and entered the final KO bracket of the last 64 players by terminating my group on the fourth rank.

After a day off, the KO bracket started and my opponent was the winner of group 15, Naoyuki Oi from Japan. I had a bad start and was running after the score. At 6-6, I managed to equal the score and even took the lead at 7-6. After a black break, the Japanese player was leading again at 8-7. The next rack was a safety battle and I had the better end and could again equal the score. This rack was pretty much the same as the one before and again, I took the lead. The last rack was a dream, 2 balls fell upon the break and the table was so open that I only had to play short ways. Even without playing brilliantly, I entered the round of the last 32 players.

Here, I had to play my Mosconi Cup team mate Niels Feijen from the Netherlands. I won the first rack easily, but missed and easy 6 ball in the second rack. At 2-1, I missed again another opportunity and only returned to the table at 2-5. Again, I had to play an easy 6 ball, but had to use the width of the pocket to get a good position on the 7 ball. Bad enough, I missed the 6 ball and another good opportunity. In the next rack, I could only react and had to play a safety on the 6 ball. But the table was not perfectly even and instead of a safety, the 6 was waiting to be pocketed in front of the pocket – easy for Feijen. At 2-9, I had my last chance, but now, I also had back luck. When trying to play a safety over two rails, I hit the 2 ball too well and pocketed it. But I had positioned the cue ball perfectly behind two other balls and had no chance to hit the 3 ball. Upon my foul, it was easy for Feijen to win the match 10-2.
 

Daryl Peach