To say that international 3-cushion at the highest level in 2019 is unpredictable would be an understatement. At this point, no expert in the world has any insight into what will happen next week. Once a World Championship or a World Cup is down to 32 players, at least 20 of the 32 are able to finish off 40 points in 16 innings, on their good day. Two good runs, one or two favorable rolls of the ball are enough to decide a match these days. Before you know it, the number 40-something in the world has kicked a top-10 player out of the tournament. That's a dynamic they are quite used to in tennis and golf. For us, it's a novelty.
It is not so much the level of play at the very summit of the game that has changed. Blomdahl already averaged over 2.000 in league play, twenty years ago. Yes, Jaspers and Caudron are at an even higher plain right now, but not by THAT much. It's the second echelon, the peloton chasing the leaders, that has almost made up the difference, closed the gap.
As a result, nobody can win consistently. Nobody can dominate. The game of 3-cushion has undergone a revolution in the past decade, and it has forced dramatic changes in the mindset of the top players. In the nineties, Blomdahl usually won. In the seventies, Ceulemans almost always won. Today, the number one player in the world does NOT win the tournament far more often than he does. Today, you can be the best, and you have to live with the fact that you get beaten 20 or 25 times every season.
Only last fall, we (rightfully) sang the praises of Eddy Merckx, who looked invincible when he won the Survival in Istanbul, a World Cup in Seoul and the Verhoeven Open in New York. There's nothing wrong with his game right now, but the winning has dried up.
Has anybody given us better averages this year than Jae Ho Cho? The elegant Korean player lifted his already wonderful game to new heights in 2019. He had a tournament average over 2.6 in the Seoul Survival, and another 2.6 in the LG+ Cup, close to world record pace both times. And he didn't win either of those events.
Is there a more consistent performer in the circuit than Marco Zanetti? Does he ever have a "bad day at the office"? The Italian always comes up with the goods. In Sharm El Sheikh, he had THREE matches over 3.000 in the books even before the final day. I'll bet on him to at least reach the quarterfinals of ANY major event. And yet, his last World Cup victory was in 2014!
Just three examples of top players who are at the very peak of their profession, but unable to dominate it. Is there an exception? No. Not even Jaspers and Caudron are immune to the constant attacks by the talented chasers from Korea, Vietnam and Turkey (and Greece, and France, and Spain). Frédéric won one of the five PBA events in 2019, but was unexpectedly eliminated early in the others. Jaspers has a similar record in 2019: he lost his 2018 world title, won one World Cup but did not get past the quarterfinals in the five remaining. (As I write this, the seventh and last World Cup in Egypt is still underway).
What we have is chaos, and that can be fun. But it can also obscure the true pecking order, the honest ELO-rating of 3-cushion. At the end of the day, we want to know who is the best. A little luck here and there, the run of the ball has become too important. Short distances favor the weaker players, long distances favor the better ones. Which is why I applaud the change that will go into effect next year: matches to 50 in World Championships and World Cups, starting from the K.O. stage. That 10-point increase does not look like much (don't forget, it's 20 %), but it will benefit the best players and test the ones who want to join those ranks. And it will give the players better chances at scoring (very) high runs. Aren't we all waiting for that day when we witness a 29?
This will be my last column for a while, I am going to take a break and recharge the batteries, then work on a second book. Six months, maybe twelve. Until then, I say: thank you for the many friendly emails, good comments and interesting questions I have received since 2015. What a wonderful sport we have, with many great people in it.