VEGHEL - The World Cup three-cushion in Veghel, from 7 to 13 November 2021, is the start of the new cycle of global tournaments. The Corona pandemic has put the circuit on hold from the World Cup in Antalya from 17 to 23 February 2021: all the other tournaments were cancelled or postponed this year. The Dutch organisation BEN, 'Biljart Evenementen Nederland', will bring the world top of the three cushion for the second time after 2019 to the Veghel city. The top event in the arena at the Noordkade will surely welcome full stands again.
Dutchman Dick Jaspers is the number one on the current world rankings and leads the field of 149 players. Torbjörn Blomdahl is the world champion, the Korean HaengJik Kim defends his title he captured in Veghel 2019 in the final against Turkish player Lütfi Cenet.
The event in the Brabant billiard stronghold not only attracts an arena full of spectators, the World Cup is also an unparalleled TV spectacle. The Dutch sports channel Ziggo Sport will broadcast a total of 38 hours of match coverage. That is a record number for a billiard event in the Netherlands. Harry Mathijssen, the organiser: ''We are very happy with the live media attention, because in the past, we only had 5 minutes of broadcast time from the NOS tv for a World Cup. The images of all the matches as of the first day will be broadcasted on the YouTube channel of Five&Six. On Ziggo Sport, the most important match of each round is streamed.
Dick Jaspers leads the world ranking since the end of 2018 and defends his position with 394 ranking points ahead of Marco Zanetti with 328, Eddy Merckx with 24, Tayfun Tasdemir with 291 and world champion Torbjörn Blomdahl with 287.
The preliminaries, with many Dutch players, start on Sunday 7 November with sixteen groups of three players each day, of which the number one of each group qualifies for the next day session. That preliminary round continues until Wednesday with the final qualification. After that, the main tournament is from Thursday to Saturday with 48 players. The knock-out rounds up to the final start on Friday with 32 players. Saturday, on the final day, the first rounds start with 16 players at noon until the final at 17.00 o'clock.
Dick Jaspers is the highest seeded player in the main tournament, in which Torbjörn Blomdahl, Marco Zanetti (Italy), Eddy Merckx (Belgium), HaengJik Kim (Korea) and Semih Sayginer (Turkey) are among his biggest rivals.
There are 18 nationalities taking part in the World Cup. Home country The Netherlands has the most participants: 25, followed by Germany with 21, Turkey with 17, Belgium and Korea with 15.
Seats are still available for all days and can be reserved until Saturday on the website: www.3cworldcup.com. From Saturday only by telephone on the number mentioned on the website. The box seats for the main tournament on Thursday, Friday and Saturday are sold out.
The capacity is 610 seats in the arena.