3-Cushion
LUXOR - What a sight to behold! Mehmet Gören, Owner of a billiard room and distributor of Theory ceu's, leading his group after hte qualification matches. The 39-year old amateur player who is usually to busy to practice, had given himself a snowflake's chance in hell to qualify. In a group with Korean Jae Ho Cho, the winner of this year's first World Cup no less... who would expect to end up on top that night?
The miracle of Luxor came in the match of the truth, for Mehmet Gören. Jae Ho Cho had beaten another Korean, Hyun Min Seo, in his first match, helped by a run of fourteen. Then Gören himself beat Seo, 40-26 in 27 innings.
Next up, was the meeting of the two winners. Jae Ho Cho versus Mehmet Gören, the diminutive Korean against the tall Turk, the rising star player in the World Cup cycle against the man who had never yet made it into a main draw.
,,I started off well with a run of eleven in the third inning'', he said later. ,,And I did not tense up at all, I was pretty relaxed because I felt I had no chance of beating him anyway. But I was lucky enough to be able to answer whenever he made runs of five or six. The gap stayed intact, and I remained ahead by roughly ten points. Three innings from the end, I did feel the excitement, but I could still finish it off.''
Mehmet Gören has a room, (Platinum Bilardo) which he runs together with Selim Özden, in downtown Istanbul. It is one of the many busy billiard places in the city of millions. ,,We have twelve match tables, but the Theory cues (our home brand, which is also sold in the Kozoom store) are also a large part of our business.''
Top players who use this cue are, amongst other, Filippos Kasidokostas, Adnan Yüksel, Murat Naci Coklu and Murat Tüzül. ,,Shortly, a very big name will start to play with this cue.''
Mehmet Gören winning his group, albeit with a lesser average than Jae Ho Cho (1.636/1.481) was one of the day's major surprises. But also almost 60-year old Dane Claus Foge, who has an on-again, off-again relationship with billiards, lived the best day in his career.
,,I became junior champion in Denmark at the age of nineteen, a year later I almost quit the game because I met my first wife.'' Ambitions went up and down from there: ,,I had a busy job, managing twenty employees in an agricultural business, and there was little time to play billiards.''
When the Dane retired (,,due to my bad back''), he plunged back into his old passion. In his career, he took part in sixteen World Cups, made it to the final qualification round six times and lost in that round on every occasion.
That changed today, after a draw against Anh Vu Duong (40-40 in 30), then when Christian Rudolph had beaten the Vietnamese, Claus Foge in one of the closing matches of the day beat the German former world champion. In the equalizing inning (from 40-29), the German miscued and his agonized "nein" was heard around the room.
Nikos Polychronopoulos, who had lost by a margin in his first match against Kostas Papakonstantinou, escaped from elimination thanks to Murat Tüzül's win over Papakonstantinou, which made Polychronopoulos the group winner on average.
Javier Teran had the lead all through his match against Roland Forthomme, and finished first. Jean Paul de Bruijn almost ruined his chances in the later stages of his match against Tolghan Kiraz. The Dutchman lost his cool and presented his opponent with a number of chances to finish. The match ended undecided, because De Bruijn produced his valuable missing point in the equalizer.
Eddy Leppens won group, but with a - for him - disappointing average of 1.194, considerably less than the 1.339 of Vietnamese Quoc Nguyen Nguyen, whom he beat. In the last match of the day, Adnan Yüksel and Arnim Kahofer produced another draw, which was good enough for the likeable Austrian to enter a main tournament.