Hall of fame with best matches ever

KOZOOM – Highlights and records are fascinating for the audience in all kind of sports. In any sports discipline where matches and performance are measurable and comparable, we can see the development throughout the years. And in most sports, the performance is improved in recent decades thanks to equipment, athletic ability and strength.

Unfortunately, in some sports we now know that the performance is delivered after using dope or other illegal things. But it remains fascinating: the times, distances, lap times and breathtaking speeds.

The billiard sport, with all its disciplines, has developed as well with great records. In the traditional disciplines the maximal runs date from fifty years ago. Even in the more difficult balk-line disciplines, thirty years ago players as Ludo Dielis, Raymond Ceulemans, Jean Marty and Dieter Müller finished their games in one inning.

Today, Frédéric Caudron shows the fans of the classic disciplines every year how to play one inning-matches with ease.
In three cushion, the most popular discipline in the world of carom billiard, the maximum performance seems to be an impossible mission. The development in this discipline is to display in phases: first the era of one and over one average (sixty years ago). The first three average match was played about thirty years ago.

Two years ago, Belgian Eddy Merckx realized an absolute top performance: in the German bundesliga he finished a fifty points match in six innings! It was the leading up to a new phase: more and more players manage to record two average overall in tournaments and championships.
The spectacular development will continue in the upcoming years, even with the new system that will be used and the speed (40 seconds) of playing. The first World Cup in 2013 in Antalya again showed a trend of higher individual averages.

Dutch column writer Bert van Manen, an excellent three cushion player himself, opened his archives especially and exclusively for Kozoom and compiled a list of the best matches ever in three cushion.
He made a ranking for matches to 40 and 60 points and matches over three winning sets.
Fifty points matches:
1 Eddy Meckx.
50 caroms in 6 innings (8.333 average).
He played the match in 2011 in the German bundesliga in the match Duisburg-Fehrenbach, where the Belgian world champion faced Korean In Won Kang. Merckx recorded in six innings runs of 4, 9, 26, 7, 0 and 4. All professional players and other billiard watchers are agreed: it can last a long time before there will be a better match than this.

2 Frédéric Caudron (two times, in 2004 and 2009)
50 points in 9 (5555)
Caudron realized this score, which was the world record for years, on the 9th of February 2004 in the Belgian league in Deurne. His opponent, the French starplayer Jérémy Bury finished with a poor four caroms, what made the match to a one-man show. The highest run was 19.
He did it later again in a match for the Dutch league with Crystal Kelly in 2009 in Waalwijk, where he beat Arie Weyenburg 50-5 with a run of 16.

2 Marco Zanetti
50 points in 9 (5555)
Another match in the German bundesliga. In the same year Caudron recorded his 9 innings match, he was himself the victim of Marco Zanetti’s high class match. Caudron scored only twelve caroms, including six in the equalizing inning.

2 Torbjörn Blomdahl
50 points in 9 (5.555)
The Swedish superstar can not be missing in this table of record matches Blomdahl set the record as the first, in 2000, in the Dutch league in Hengelo against Christ van der Smissen. Blomdahl had 31 points at the scoresheet after eight innings and finished with 19.

Matches three sets of fifteen.

Dick Jaspers 45 points in 8 innings (5.625)
Maybe it was the most perfect match Jaspers has ever played. It was the last match at the European championship in French Florange, when Jaspers beat Torbjörn Blomdahl in 2, 1 and 5 innings for three winning sets. He finished the first set with 13 points, started the second with the maximum 15 and the third with 6. That means a prolonged run of 34 points, however not recognized as a record. Blomdahl lost the match without a set to win, but with three average.

2 Frédéric Caudron

45 points in 9 (5.000)
The amazing fact is that Caudron recorded this match already seventeen years ago. In that year (1996) the Belgian met Semih Sayginer at the World championships in Daegu (Korea) and wiped the Turk off the table in 5, 2 and 2 innings. Highest run: 13.
Forty caroms:

1 Frédéric Caudron
40 points in 6 (6.666), 2 times, in 1997 and 2006
The ambitious Belgian shows up in all record rankings, even two times in the best to 40 points. Twice he finished that score in six innings, in 1997 and 2006. His opponents, in a Belgian Grand Prix, were Eddy Willems Jr. and Peter De Backer. The highest runs in these two matches were 15 and 19.

2 Eddy Merckx

40 points in 7 (5.714)
The most recent entry in the Hall of Fame. In the Antalya World Cup earlier this year Merckx finished his forty points match against Murat Naci Coklu in seven innings. In the fifth inning the Belgian ran a 17, which brought him to 31 at the scoresheet. Two innings later, he closed the match.

40 points in 8 (5.000)

There are more players that performed this achievement. The matches we know:
Marco Zanetti in Austria against Franz Stenzel in the Austrian league.

Dick Jaspers against Lütfi Cenet at the European championships 2012 in Istanbul.

Martin Horn in the German bundesliga against Karlheinz Gertzen.

Eddy Leppens in a Belgian ranking tournament in Mechelen against Kurt Ceulemans.