Big hitters like Forthomme and Founaki make misstep

TRABZON - Where Eddy Leppens swept away his loss in the first match wit a resounding victory in his second and Nikos Polychronopoulos mercilessly walked over Jean Paul de Bruijn and threw him out of the tournament, there started Roland Forthomme and Kouji Funaki with a misstep, which already was fatal for the Belgian. He lost his second match of the day against Jérôme Barbeillon with a very poor score. The Frenchman showed a good shape, but actually had a breeze to Forthomme, who ended up 0.739 average.

Kouji Funaki, the revelation of the last tournament last year in Hurghada, where he eliminated Dick Jaspers, also lost his first match of the day. He played against Chung Bok Lee, but in the afternoon he repared his misstake in his second performance. Funaki defeated Ahmet Alp 2-0 (15-7 and 15-4) and now belongs to the best 32 of the tournament.

Eddy Leppens also opened the door to the main tournament by a 2-0 victory over Jae Guen Kim with a strong average of 1.764 in his second match. The Belgian so ended before Murat Tüzül, who had beaten him earlier this day in a beautiful battle.

Nikos Polychronopoulos left no doubt who was the strongest in the decisive match in Group B against Jean Paul de Bruijn. The Greek dominated the match from the first caroms, never gave his opponent a chance to fight himself back into the match and finished with a 2-0 victory, 15-9 and 15-4 in sets, Polychronopoulos averaged 3.000, De Bruijn 1.444.

Glenn Hofmann couldn't blame himself for missing the qualification in a very tough group. The young Dutchman lost his first match against Youichirou Mori 2-0 and average 1.2000, this afternoon he bowed his head for Adnan Yüksel. Hofman started with a winning set in two innings, but then lost the next two sets. Still his average over the whole match was better than Yüksel's: Hofman played 2.055, the Turk 1.894.

Barry van Beers is growing out to the stunt man of the preliminaries. After entering the next round as the first substitute, today he ended up as the winner in his group with José Maria Más and Vagelis Moulos. The Dutchman averaged 1.688.