3-Cushion
LIMA - On the day of the Asians in Lima, with three victories of the Korean players and a wonderful final rush of Kouji Funaki, the results of the first day were recorded this night. The sixteen best players in the ranking will enter the tournament today and can now make an estimate of their chances in the groups.
The Koreans Dong Gung Kang, Chung Bok Lee and Jae Ho Cho, in any case, can be feared opponents for Marco Zanetti, Martin Horn and Tayfun Tasdemir. Kouji Funaki, the Japanese opponent of Eddy Leppens today, proved his high class last night. He defeated Erick Tellez, although not in an easy match (3-2 and 1.048 average), but he finished in style with a run of fourteen, the highest of the day.
Murat Naci Coklu wasn't on his best when he started his match against Carlos Campino, but after a los in the first set he won 3-1 (1.500). The Pan-American champion Javier Teran lost without any chance to the Mexican Raymundo Munoz (3-0, 0.720), Raimond Burgman allowed his opponent Rafal Noya no set (15-11, 15-8, 15-11) and Funaki woke up on time , after he had a backlog in sets two times.
The first selection has been made in the Circulo Militar, where an audience is expected in higher numbers, as the top players (Jaspers, Caudron, Kim, Merckx, Blomdahl) enter the arena.
Eleven of the 24 players remained below the 1.000 average yesterday. Javier Teran, Ihab El Messery, Michael Kang and Erick Tellez didn't even play 0.800. Apparently the aren't good enough to play a world championship in this discipline.
Dong Gung Kang had the best start on the first day (1.956), before Jae Ho Cho (1.730), Jean Paul de Bruijn (1.607) and Murat Naci Coklu (1.500), the unfortunate Jean van Erp played 1.477, but lost to Tonny Carlsen.