SEOUL - The world's top three-cushion players will launch the new season on Thursday, August 22, with a Survival Masters in Seoul, Korea. The top of the world rankings have been invited to the tournament, where Dick Jaspers won the $50,000 top prize in Seoul a few years ago with 2,692 average in a final with Vietnamese Quyet Chien Tran, Turk Semih Sayginer and Korean Chi Yeon Cho. The Dutchman is now again among the title contenders with among others Myung Woo Cho, Torbjörn Blomdahl and Eddy Merckx. Nikos Polychronopoulos was the last World 3 Cushion Survival winner.
The Survival Masters is preceded by a women's tournament, played in the same format. Therese Klompenhouwer, the only European player, is the top favorite there. The ladies start qualifying with one-to-one matches on Friday 16 August, followed by two semi-finals in Survival format on 21 August, with the first two of each semi-final advancing to the final.
The men's tournament welcomes all the big names starting from the top of the rankings. The Korean tournament had its first edition last year with the top international three-cushion players. Dick Jaspers is the last winner in the World Cup circuit with a win in Porto over Myung Woo Cho.
The Dutchman then left for a holiday to Canada and comes to the start optimally rested for his new Korean mission. There he so dominated last year in the Survival system with four billiards players at the match table at the same time.
Twenty of 24 players are already known, four more players will be designated by the pre-selection in Korea. Only German Martin Horn (ranked 6th) is missing from the top 20 world rankings. Horn has not yet fully recovered from the foot fracture and wants to concentrate on the World Cups and championships. The world championship in three cushion is from 25-29 September in Vietnam.
The current top 10 also includes Dick Jaspers, Quyet Chien Tran, Phuong Vinh Bao, Jun Tae Kim, Myung Woo Cho, Eddy Merckx, Sameh Sidhom, Marco Zanetti and Torbjörn Blomdahl.
For the men's tournament, for which the players will be welcomed to the Jamsil Vita 500 coliseum on the day before the event, six rounds are played on Thursday from 12.00 Korean time, followed by three retrials as intermediate rounds. The four quarter-finals are on Saturday, with the semi-finals and finals on Sunday.
The 20 seeded players according to the rankings are:
Quyet Chien Tran
Jun Tae Kim
Dick Jaspers
Phuong Vinh Bao
Myung Woo Cho
Sameh Sidhom
Torbjörn Blomdahl
Eddy Merckx
Marco Zanetti
Haeng Jik Kim
Jung Han Heo
Tayfun Tasdemir
Tolgahan Kiraz
Jérémy Bury
Ruben Legazpi
Nikos Polychronopoulos
Berkay Karakurt
Myeong Jung Cha
Glenn Hofman
Hong Chiem Thai