NEWS  September 17, 2008   ET Netherlands Open 9-Ball – First victory in 5 years

The 5th stop of the Eurotour 2008 was held in Weert (Netherlands) in the House of Billiards. The IBPF could register 231 participants and a more than crowded field, considering that the number of participants was originally limited to 224.

As the number 20 of the ranking I first had a walk-through and then was opposed to the English player Jason Lawrence. I played well and had no trouble to win the match 9-0. In the second match in the winner’s bracket, I had to play against Artem Koshovyi from Ukraine and had bad luck in the match, or to put it this way, my opponent had booked the luck all for himself. In spite of many missed shots and loads of forced rail shots by the Ukrainian player, I finally managed to win on the tight, but fully deserved score of 9-8. Now, a spot in the final round of 32 players in KO format was at stake and I was opposed to the Turkish player Mehmet Cankurt who lives in Germany. Even if I played not too bad, Cankurt played a bit better and finally scored a deserved 9-6. Having lost this match, I had to do some overtime work in the losers bracket and had to play the Polish player Radoslaw Babica. In the past, I had not always produced my best billiards against Babica and had lost some of my matches against him. Butt his time, things were different and I entered the KO round with an undisputed 9-1 win.

Here, the drwa made me play the Italian player Gabriele Cimmino from the winner’s bracket. Obviously, early Saturday morning was not the ideal time fort he Italian player and with another clear 9-1 win, I entered the next round. Here, it came once more to the clash with Oliver Ortmann (GER), to whom I had lost 8-9 a few weeks earlier at the European Championships in 9-Ball. Butt his time, I could limit my own mistakes and entered the quarter-finals winning 9-4. My next opponent was the Russian Juniors European Champion Ruslan Chinahov, to whom I had lost year at the same stage of the competition. So, it was time for revenge and I succeeded in doing so. With an undisputed 9-4, I entered for the first time after one year a semi-final of the Euro Tour.

My opponent was nobody else but the new 14-1 World Champion from the Netherlands Niels Feijen. At the beginning of the match, I was a bit nervous and not exactly focused and gave away the first three racks to trail 0-4 and 1-5. Now, I needed a little miracle, since Feijen played well and since his World Champion title, he was surfing on the wave of success. The alternating break format did not exactly increase my chances, but somehow I made the impossible come true. After two mistakes made by my Dutch opponent and an ace break, I came back to 4-5. After losing another rack, I delivered a real fight and finally won 9-6 and had entered a Eurotour final for the first time after almost 4 years. In the final, I had my re-match against Mehmet Cankurt (TUR), who had beaten me earlier and who had eliminated in the semi-finals my Mosconi Cup team mate Konstantin Stepanov (RUS) 9-6.

The final started a bit better for me and I could earn a little advantage. I managed to keep it throughout the match and could even increase the score to a final 9-6. So, for the first time since 2003, I won a Eurotour title and gain the first overall rank in the all-time ranking with 14 titles in 95 Eurotour tournaments.