NEW YORK - The men's tournament at the Carom Café in New York starts today, Monday, with 98 players in the pre-rounds and four seeded players. For this year's edition, Torbjörn Blomdahl, Dani Sánchez, Eddy Merckx and Semih Sayginer have directly access to for the second part of the group stage. Myung-Woo Cho, Dion Nelin and Roland Forthomme are other well-known players in the schedule. The women's winner, Jieun Han, has also registered for the men's tournament. The preliminary rounds are played in 14 groups of 7 players.
Dick Jaspers, Marco Zanetti, Martin Horn and most of the well-known Asians are missing in the field. The Dutch world champion Jaspers: "I'm not playing this year, because I have planned my holiday on the busy calendar." The Koreans did not come to the Verhoeven Open last year either. The Vietnamese Nguyen Quoc Nguyen, Quyet Chien Tran, Dinh Nai Ngo, Minh Cam Ma and Trung Hau Do and others cancelled this week. Nguyen: "My schedule is very crowded, I am leaving for a stay with friends in America next week."
The group schedule for the preliminaries in Verhoeven Open:
Poule A:
Arnim Kahofer, Jerry Geist, Roland Siedentopf, John Freddy Sabogal, Hyuk Yoon, Jae Kyu Lee, Ronald van Geyt
Poule B:
Chang Hoon Seo, Jim Watson, Jeremy Castillo, Claus Petersen, Vandenver Reina, Kim Bengtson, Lim Song
Poule C:
Jun Tae Kim, Werner Klingberg, Eric Kwon, Sang Jin Lee, Yuko Nishimoto, Sang Kyun Yim, Carlos Villegas
Poule D:
Hugo Patiño, Brian Knudsen, Markus Dömer, Allan Jensen, Martin Olsen, Young Ha Choi, Vas Vassi
Poule E:
Michael Keng Peter Ehrhardt, Kaj Olsen, Michel Dauphin, Ad Broeders, Daniel Aceedo, Fahn Korkmaz
Poule F:
William Oh, Christian Camilo Tegada, Raymon Groot, Nayez Ramirez, Jolian Molina, Hugo Flores, Lukas Mortensen
Poule G:
Dion Nelin, Christian Portilla, Lloyd Wallace, Demetrios Tilaverides, Luis Fernando Carrasco, Nikolas Kogelbauer, Rich Kim
Poule H:
Myung-Woo Cho, Frank Sudar, Harry Peña, Dietmar Skupia, Ira Lee, Walid Elkhauly, Volkan Cetin
Poule I:
John Park, Jose Rodriguez, Thai Loc, Ngoc Ahn Thi Pham, Ayako Sakai, Hyunji Yong, Danny Korte
Poule J:
Miguel Torres, Gerhard Kostistansky, Alfred Nebuda, Franz Spruzina, Juan Jaramillo, Christobal Torres, Dong Uk Oh
Poule K:
Jieun Han, Manuel Bello, Adrie Tachoire, Seung Ji Jung, Raye Raskin, Rogelio Aredo Tae Young Hwang
Poule L:
Sameh Sidhom, Woong Shin, Pablo Flores, George Kagram, Frank Giardana, Tomas Tullberg, Hong Van Luu.
Poule M:
Andres Lizaraxo, Flemming Madsen, Khalil Diab, Erik Wimke, Dan Johansen, Henrik Jeppson, Young Gull Lee
Poule N:
Roland Forthomme, Kang Lee, Ahmet Magraby, Karina Jetten, Sylvia Eckel, Xavier Buttner, Jorge Mora
All matches broadcast live on Kozoom.