VIENNA - The Austrian spectators cheered for their own son (Andreas Efler), the Belgians embraced Eddy Leppens and Torbjörn Blomdahl expressed his happiness after his victory against Jae Ho Cho, actually the return and revenge match of the final in the Suwon World Cup.
The Stadthalle in Vienna has already been filled with ambiance on the first day of the main event. The World Cup in the Austrian capital, with his rich history in billiard, had a pretty slow start with all those matches in the preliminaries, but now the pressure is on.
And now that the top of the world enters the billiard room, the tribunes are fuller and the favorites are loudly encouraged. Andreas Efler was one of them, very popular in his country, born with a great talent for billiard and always able to stunt against top players. He needed five sets to defeat Murat Naci Coklu today, but when he made his final point, the applause thundered from the tribuns.
Eddy Leppens, at that moment, was celebrating his victory against Martin Horn already with his supporters. The story that goes around is always that the Belgium, who played the World champion final in Sluiskil in 2010 against Daniel Sanchez, prefers to play a full length of a match and is not so strong in playing sets.
Today he proved the opposite: the Belgian was sharp until the last moment, was always in balance with Horn, but was unstoppable for his opponent in the deciding set: 1-15 (average 1.882).
And then there was the match between Torbjörn Blomdahl and Jae Ho Cho, the the revenge of the World Cup in Suwon four weeks ago when the Swede won so easily 3-0.
Now it was a real fight, not on too high level, Blomdahl said himself aftr the match, but eagerly to the end. The Korean sparkled with a run of twelve, took twice a lead in sets, but each time he saw Blomdahl fight back.
In the deciding set the Swede demonstrated a stronger mentality than his opponent. ,,Of course I made a few mistakes, especially in the first set, which I gave away,'' said Blomdahl later. ,,But in such a long match, you always do something wrong, so I don't blame myself. In any case, I am very happy that I've reached the next round and won against an opponent who can do anything at the billiard, he's a real talent. I'm sure that one time he will be the world champion.''