Tomorrow is another day, Eddy Merckx said after a match in which he wiped the Korean player Dong Gung Kang in a record time from the table: 3-0. The Belgian leader in the World Cup this year, will just say in his own language that one swallow does not bring spring and he wants to forget the Crystal Kelly tournament in Nice as soon as possible.
He has played under his normal level, but couldn't find a reason for it. ,,It was not a matter of bad playing, or feeling not so well. It was more a combination of these factors,'' he said last night.
Those things rarely happen to him, a breakdown in one week, but Eddy Merckx is just a human body. And sometimes a period of rest is not so bad for an athlete. ,,We have come back from Crystal Kelly in Nice on Tuesday, so I was hardly at home been and also han Thursday I packed up again for Porto. I saw the draw and I knew that the Korean was my first opponent. They are always very dangerous, but he did not threaten me at all, because in my game everything was going well tonight.''
He won three sets, each time after a flawless start and finished with a final run of eight. The Korean was sitting on his chair after the match, amazed and bewildered, because he will rarely have felt so hopeless as in his match against the Belgian, who finished with 2,045.
Jef Philipoom, who beat Pedro Pais (3-0), a 29 year old player with a wildcard, will be the next opponent for Merckx tomorrow. He realizes of course that he will have to play much better to have an opportunity. Tonight the balls roled a bit wrong for the Belgian, but he encountered just a little opposition from his opponent.
The Korean game between Sung-Won Choi and Jae Ho Cho, at the other table, and the fight between Marco Zanetti and Ryuuji Umeda kept the spectators for a long time on the tribunes.
Sung-Won Choi, the glorious winner of the Agipi Masters this year, played a poor and lousy match, far below his qualities and lost his chances for the next round. Jae Ho Cho, who beat him 3-1, is making a remarkable tournament. He lost his first match against the Portuguese Paolo Andrade, but repaired against Glenn Hoffman and defeated one day later Sung-Won Choi, who was pretended to be much stronger, 3-1. The averages: 1.340 for Cho, 1.116 for Choi.
Marco Zanetti, who came to Matosinhos with a fantastic Crystal Kelly tournament behind him, had a very strong period in the match against Umeda, including the run of eleven from the break-off in the third set. Thereafter he rushed quite simple to a 3-1 win with an average of 1,700.
The matches for tomorrow (starting at 11.00) are:
Jaspers-Leppens
Bury Blomdahl
Kasidokostas-Polychronopoulos
Legazpi Caudron
Forthomme-Kim
Sánchez-Tasdemir
Philipoom-Merckx
Zanetti-Cho.