3-Cushion
SEOUL - 16-year-old Korean Young-won Kim surprised again many fans in his second consecutive PBA tournament, eliminating Murat Naci Coklu 3-1 in the round leading to the best eight on Saturday. Dani Sánchez was kept out of the final rounds after his nice victory over Semih Sayginer by a dry 3-0 and Burak Hashas was halted in his triumphant race this time by 3-0 loss against Vietnamese Phuong Linh Nguyen. The Spaniards are the masters in the last 8 with David Martinez, Javier Palazón and Antonio Montes as the only Europeans.
For Montes (31), there was a spectacular finish against Eddy Leppens in the last 16. The Spaniard finished on 2-2 with the maximum 11 in the decisive fifth set. He then beat his compatriot Ivan Mayor 3-1 one round later, thus is facing Martinez in the next round. By the way, Mayor had beaten one of the standouts, Vietnamese Dinh Nai Ngo, in the best 32. In the Mayor-Montes match, Mayor won the first set 15-7, the following sets went to Montes 15-9, 15-5 and 15-3.
Dani Sánchez seemed to be on his way to his first success in the PBA after winning the famous match against Semih Sayginer 3-1 after a quick start. Then Sánchez also beat Ju-sun Park in the shoot-out, but against Jong-won Kim things went wrong with a 3-0 loss and 1,050 for Sánchez.
Javier Palazón advanced to the top eight by a 3-1 win over In-su Park, David Martinez went first past Wan-seop Lim and with a great 2,500 past Ji-hoon Sun. Dong Koong Kang, the previous tournament winner, beat Lütfi Cenet 3-1.
In the next eight, the matches are:
Palazón-Young-won Kim, Dong-Koong Kang-Ho-soon Won, Yusuke Mori-Jong-won Kim and Montes-Martinez.
Sang-a Kim and Da-hee Kim, two rather unknown Koreans, are in the women's final, where all the top favorites have fallen. Sang-a Kim beat Su-bion Jeon 3-1 in the semi-finals, Da-hee Kim beat Min-young Kim 3-0.
Dani Sánchez after his win over Sayginer went down in a 0-3 match
Dae-hee Kim, one of the rather unknown final players in the ladies