SEOUL - The Korean professional league PBA and the ladies competition PBA have started up for the third season this week. The first matches were this Monday, the best known absentees are Frédéric Caudron (medical problem) and Filipos Kasidokostas (reason unknown). In the opening days, we already saw surprising eliminations for the new lady player, former UMB world champion Orie Hida and Colombian Robinson Morales. The PBA (men) and LPBA (women) are offered a calendar with eight events for the individual tournaments this season, two more than last season. The COVID measures with two weeks mandatory quarantine for foreign players is still in effect.
The first tournament is the BlueOne Resort event to be played in Gyeongju-si, 2 hours from Seoul by express train. The PBA prize money remains unchanged at 184.400 euros (250 million South Korean won), the LPBA prize money has increased to 36.880 euros (50 million won) this year, that was 29.500 euros last season.
Two newcomers to the ladies are Orie Hida from Japan and Sruong Pheavy from Cambodia. For the first event in the men's category, a remarkable number of non Korean players have withdrawn, like Caudron and Kasidokostas, Dinh Nai Ngo, Pedro Piedrabuena, Carlos Anguita, Kostas Papakonstantinou and others. Dutch player Jean Paul de Bruijn has withdrawn from the PBA circuit, which is not known so far for the other players.
The winner of a PBA tournament earns 73.760 euros, the winner of a ladies tournament 14.750 euros.
Some rules have changed, such as the elimination of the two preliminary rounds according to the men's Survival (R128 and R64), replaced by matches in sets of 15 points in the best of three. For the ladies, the first two rounds are still played according to Survival.
The rest of the tournament remains the same, from R32 (round with 32 players) to the "Best of 5" from the semi-finals with the 5th set to 11 points and the "Best of 7" in the final with 11 points in the deciding set.
For the ladies, from R16 (Round of 16) there is a knock-out match to 'Best of 3' to 11 points with a 3rd set to 9 points and the final to 'Best of 5' with a 5th set to 9 points. The breakshot in the Survival is determined in advance from the 27 existing positions.
The international field of participants in the PBA Tour has remarkably decreased compared to the previous PBA season. Several foreign players, who were declared eligible to play or not according to the results of the last season, will not show up in the first PBA tournament.
In the first PBA tournament, 12 non-Korean players are at the start:
David Zapata, David Martinez and Javier Palazón from Spain
Minh Cam Ma, Duc Minh Tran and Nguyen Huynh Phuong Linh from Vietnam
Savas Bulut, Birol Uymaz and Adnan Yüksel from Turkey
Glenn Hofman from the Netherlands
Eddy Leppens from Belgium
Hideaki Kobayashi from Japan
Robinson Morales from Colombia
The 14 non-Koreans who are absent in the first PBA tournament:
Frédéric Caudron (Belgium), medical reasons
Filippos Kasidokostas (Greece), unknown
Carlos Anguita (Spain), personal reason
Jean-Paul de Bruijn (Netherlands), does not return to PBA
Pierre Soumagne (France), does not return
Tonny Carlsen (Denmark), does not return
Dinh Nai Ngo (Vietnam)
Kostas Papakonstantinou (Greece)
Pedro Piedrabuena (USA)
Allan Schröder (Denmark), does not return
The following players had already left last season:
Roberto Rojas (Mexico)
Apostolos Balogiannis (Greece)
Ahn Vu Duong (Vietnam)
Nobuyasu Sakai (Japan)
In the LPBA league, 116 players (7 foreign ladies) are in action:
Japanese players Ayako Sakai, Orie Hida, Namiko Hayashi, Natsumi Higashiuchi and Ryoko Kobayashi.
The Cambodian Sruong Pheavy
Andrea Hofman, the wife of Glenn Hofman who is registered as a Colombian player, was eliminated in the first round.
Amal Najjari, who plays for Spain and is Caudron's wife, is absent, as is the player himself.
At this stage of the competition, Orie Hida was out in the first round of pre-qualification, finishing 3rd in Survival. Sruong Pheavy advanced to the next round. Jung-suk Lim, a three-time winner in previous seasons, lost to Sruong Pheavy in the R64.
The round of 16 is the start of the knock-out matches. Among them, an interesting match is reported: Ga-young Kim against Mi-rae Lee.
Dutchman Glenn Hofman already pulled off a remarkable master piece. In the second round facing Korean Won-jun Choi, Hofman was 14-8 down in the third and deciding set, but still won 15-14. The set results: 15-14, 9-15, 15-14, average Hofman 1,500, Choi 1,654.
In the opening rounds, a masked player appeared to the PBA arena named Hacker. He lost his match to Minh Cam Ma.