3-Cushion
HURGHADA – Mr. President himself, Jean Claude Dupont, walked into the lobby of the hotel on the evening of the first day, to find that he had not missed anything of importance in the Hurghada World Cup. Tension-filled awkward matches with low averages, no high runs and only some close finishes to provide excitement.
Jean Claude Dupont has had busy weeks: the WC for ladies in Tokyo, Japan, negotiations in several future projects, he has played three matches himself and has now travelled to Hurghada.
,,I don’t know how he does it, with so little sleep'', said his wife Enny admiringly.
Tomorrow (monday) he will no doubt have taken his place in the stands, and the level will have gone up. Murat Tüzül, Wilco van Wijk, Young Chull Kim, those are the names of players who should average over 1. The ones who have qualified today, lead by Apostolos Balogiannis, Jack Wijnen, Ioannis Antoniou, Adrie Tachoire and Bart Ceulemans, have gotten used to the tables and will no doubt perform better tomorrow (Monday) than on the opening day.
Two Dutch ladies, one of those Tokyo WC participant Karina Jetten, are already out of the tournament. Tom Ronge went out at the hands of Turk Gokhan Salman, who did well averaging 1.166.
Bart Ceulemans just lost one set and had 0.857 average, he proceeds. Jack Wijnen scored 0.909 but goes through as well.
French junior champion Adrie Tachoire won his group with Thomas Wagner, and the last player to sneak into the next round was Richard de Bruin. He won a horrible match against Piet Blankers: ,,It was too bad for words'', said the Dutchman, ,,but tomorrow is another day.''