3-Cushion
VIERSEN - The eight teams for the final rounds at the team World championship in Viersen are known. Two Dutch teams, the home team Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Korea, Sweden and France show up in today's knock-out. The matches:
17.00:
Germany-Belgium
France-Sweden
20.00:
Netherlands A-Netherlands B
Turkey-Korea.
The most exciting match in the last qualifications was the encounter between Belgium and Czech. Frédéric Caudron and Roland Forthomme were close to the elimination when the Czechs Martin Bohac and Radek Novak came back from 33-24 behind with a run of 7. They were 37-35 on the lead when Caudron and Forthomme excelled with a brilliant 5: two bankshots, a force follow and two rather normal shots.
,,We have our own tactic and decided to not talk during the match'', explained Caudron. ,,But at the end, when there were two or three very difficult positions, we conferred and finally we managed to win.''
The Netherlands A, the title holder, played the best match so far against Colombia. Dick Jaspers and Jean van Erp shone with some nice runs in a row: 6, 4, 2, 5 and 8. They took a comfortable lead (34-17) and defeated Robinson Morales and Henry Diaz 40-23 in 15 (2.667 average).
The Turks were never in trouble against Italy (40-17 in 21), the Germans defeated the Greek team including the best run so far. Martin Horn and Ronny Lindemann recorded a 13 to ran out to 36-26 and took the win at 40-30 in 23.
The Dutch A team closed the preliminaries with the best average of all teams.
The seeded teams:
1 Netherlands A 2.051
2 Turkey 1.702
3 Sweden 1.667
4 Germany 1.509
5 South Korea 1.481
5 Belgium: 1.481
7 Netherlands B 1.194
7 France 1.194.
Colombia was the best in average of the eliminated teams with 1.703 ahead of the Czech Republic with 1.604.
The Dutch team, Jean van Erp and Dick Jaspers, best match in the qualifications
The Belgians escaped with a great final run
Can Capak and Tayfun Tasdemir, walk-over against Italy