NEW YORK - The famous New York tournament, named after Sang Lee in earlier years, is still one week away from starting. Two top players, ranked high in the world rankings, Tayfun Tasdemir (7th and world champion) and Sameh Sidhom (4th), have signed up for the edition from July 31 to August 6 at the Carom Cafe in New York. The line-up is by far not as strong as in previous editions when many world's top players were present in Flushing. Tasdemir and Sidhom are the only two seeded players.
Dick Jaspers, the world number one, indicated one week ago that the international calendar is too full to include New York. Therefore, players missing include those who played leading roles in New York, such as Torbjörn Blomdahl, Marco Zanetti, Frédéric Caudron, Dani Sánchez, Eddy Merckx, Semih Sayginer and the top Asian and Turkish players. The Koreans and Vietnamese, once with many participants in the Carom Cafe, are notable absentees. The main group of players comes from the USA including Pedro Piedrabuena, Hugo Patino, Harry Pena, Michael Kang and Ira Lee, who spent some time in Korea last month to visit a PBA event and the widow and daughter of Sang Lee. The Colombians come with eight players, the best known of whom are Huberney Cataño, Alexander Salazar and Henry Diaz. Luis Aveiga is the only from Ecuador. The Danes, also regular visitors in Flushing, show up with only one player: Kim Bengtsson.
From the European countries, Roland Forthomme is the best-known participant. The Belgian will travel with his girlfriend Karina Jetten. There are also six Dutch with Volkan Cetin as the best known, five French with Joël Switala, four Belgians and for Austria the young Nikolaus Kogelbauer will play.
The list of participants is provisional as there is still a week to sign up.
The provisional list of players at Carom Cafe in Flushing