SEOUL - Young Korean Jun-tae Kim has achieved a record score of 182 with a best run of 16 during the pre-selection of the Survival 3-Cushion. The preliminary rounds, with a total of 104 players, are played in Yeok-samdong Muffle Billiards Club. The main tournament with the world top starts on Thursday 19 September with 32 players and lasts until Sunday 22 September. The highest score in the Survival 3-Cushion Masters so far was made by Eddy Merckx with 163. The Belgian was the last winner of a Survival in Istanbul.
Jun-tae Kim is not an unknown talent in global billiards: he was twice second in a Junior World championship following HaengJik Kim in Guatemala in 2012 and Tae-Kwa Kim in Guri in 2015. His opponents in the first qualifying round were Sung-moon Kim, Seung-won Jung and Min-a Kim. Juntae Kim's average was 3,100. Choong-bok Lee, Siheung-si, Soo-young Park and Bong-chul Kim are also in the race for qualifying. The finalists will be definitely known tomorrow, Tuesday.
The seeded players and the wildcards are:
1 Dick Jaspers
2 Marco Zanetti
3 Tayfun Tasdemir
4 Semih Sayginer
5 Eddy Merckx
6 Jae-Ho Cho
7 Quyet Chien Tran
8 Sameh Sidhom
9 Murat Naci Coklu
10 Jérémy Bury
11 HaengJik Kim
12 Jung-Han Heo
13 Torbjörn Blomdahl
14 Myung-Woo Cho
15 Sung-Won Choi
16 Nguyen Quoc Nguyen
17 Dani Sanchez
18 Roland Forthomme
19 Lütfi Cenet
20 Dion Nelin
21 Nikos Polychronopoulos (Kozoom wildcard)
22 Therese Klompenhouwer (wild card Kozoom)
23 Wan-Young Choi (wild card KBF)
24 Hyung-Mook Lim (wildcard SBF)