NEWS  October 14, 2008  World Cup of Pool – An unnecessary defeat in the quarter-finals

For the third time, event promoter Matchroom Sports organized the World Cup of Pool, the unofficial World Championship in doubles. The tournament was played fort he second time in the Outland, a night club in Rotterdam. 32 teams from 31 nations competed fort he title and an overall prize money of 250,000 US Dollars.

For the first time, I played with Thomas Engert for Team Germany and we sure had good chances to score a good result. We know each other for many years and we already had played together several times in double tournaments.

We played 9-Ball in a KO bracket in races to 8 with winner break.

In round one, we draw Quatar (Bashar Hussain & Fahad Mohammadi), a feasible task. We started very well and scored the 2-0. In rack 3, I missed an easy 5 ball, because I wanted to play too good a position on the 6 ball for Thomas. Instead of scoring a relaxed 3-0, all of a sudden, we were trailing 2-3 and started to get a bit nervous. However, we managed to turn the match around and finally scored a 8-3 win.

Our opponents in round 2 were the Polish players Radoslaw Babica and Mateusz Sniegocki. Again, we had the better start and were leading 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2. A lucky ball from Sniegocki and a missed 8 ball by me, and back they were in the race - 4-4. We then were even trailing 4-6 and the pressure was on us. A black break by the Polish players and steel nerves made us come back to 6-6. In rack 13, we finally had a successful break, but had to play a safety. Babica missed his rail shot and we scored the next two racks to win 8-6. Now, we had entered the quarter-finals against Team England with 9 Ball World Champion Daryl Peach and the leader of the overall ranking of the Euro Tour Mark Gray.

The match was played in a race to 9 and we started like before and scored a quick 2-0 lead. In rack 3, we missed a safety and the English players made use of this opportunity and scored the next two racks. Each team won one more rack and at 3-3, something unbelievable happened. I missed an ultra-easy 9 ball and this was most probably the point of no return. I missed another ball in the next rack when missing a feasible combination 4 on 7, so the score evolved to 3-5 instead of 5-3. Even if I could make up for one of the mistakes by a great combination 2 on 9, but then Thomas missed an easy 4 ball in the next rack and again, we could not equal the score. We came back to 5-6, but then had another black break. At 5-7, I made another safety mistake and the English players scored the 8-5. We won the next two racks, but then we had to bury our dream of winning the title. We lost 7-9 in a match we should have won 9-4. I was not satisfied with my performance in all three matches and assume the responsibility for having lost this match against England. We could have done better and I hope that we can take our revenge next year with the same team.

The results of the semi-finals:

China – England 5-9

Philippines – USA 6-9

In the final, England played the US team Rodney Morris and Shane Van Boening. The US players almost lost their quarter-final against Austria, but managed to slip through, to eliminate Team Philippines with Dennis Orcollo and Francisco Bustamante in the semi-finals.

In the final, the two did not leave the slightest doubt that they had come to win. They took a quick advantage and were never trailing. England could only come back to 2-2 and the rest was easy game for the US players. They fully deserved to win 11-7 and won their first title at the World Cup of Pool.