SAMSUN – The start of the WC artistic in Turkish Samsun was nota n especially spectacular one. The marathon match between Turk Serdar Gumus and Kevin Tran lasted four and a half hours, to be finally won by Gumus.
Jean Reverchon, the French title candidate and seeded for the main tournament, said later: ,,I am not sure if this is what the spectators want.''
It turned out to be a false start, the remaining qualification matches went much smoother.
Thomas Ahrens qualified after two of his three matches. The German beat both Ahmet Arslan and Naoki Harada and has the highest average after two rounds: 79.683.
Japanese Harada and Turk Arslan are both still in the running for the second spot.
In Flight B Serdur Gumus leads with 4 match points, ahead of Kevin Tran and Tadashi Machida with two points each. Belgian Marc Janssen is almost certainly without a chance already.
Serdur Gumus laid the foundation for his qualification in his marathon match against Tran, with the following scoreline:
Kevin Tran-Serdar Gumus: 0-2.
59-43, 54-59, 34-41, 43-28, 40-44. Tran had a higher percentage than his opponent: 64.738/59.722.
In Flights C and D, only one round was played on the first day.
Belgian Walter Bax started with a victory over Spaniard Juan Carlos Cuadrado. Japanese Kouhei Kano won his match against Robert Immervoll.
Bernd Singer defeated local favorite Koray Kirman 2-0, and a 55.925 percentage. Dutchman Rob Scholtes had the worst start of all contestants: he lost to Korean Jinhoe Kang 2-0 and a 32.631 average score.
This WC has 4 qualifying flights with 4 players each, and a main tournament with 8 seeded players. Sander Jonen defends his world title in Samsun.