BUCHEON - Five young Korean players have played the final of a qualifying tournament in Bucheon, where three tickets could be earned for the Junior World championships played from 3 to 5 September in Guri, South Korea. The 17-year old Myeong-Woo Cho, number two at last year's World championship, was by far the best with 1.647 average ahead of Jun-Tae Kim and Jung-Ju Shin.
The five Koreans played in the Bucheon DS Billiards Club in the final round robin. Myeong-Woo Cho, who lost last year's final match against French player Adrien Tachoire in Sluiskil, remained unbeaten. The number five of the final score, Tae-Kwan Kim, the younger brother of the four-fold junior world champion Haeng-Jik Kim, could not qualify, but recorded the highest tournament run: 17!
The five qualifiers remained after the preliminaries which with 31 players. Hae-Chang Jung, Myeong-Woo Cho, Jun-Tae Kim and Tae-Kwan Kim were the best players from the first days with high averages.
Tae-Kwan Kim took the first group with three wins and one draw (1.121 average), second was Jeong-Ju Sin with 1.189 ahead of Jun-Woo Lim 0.897 and Dae-Hyun Jang 0.961.
Jun-Tae Kim won the other group with 1.539 average ahead of Hae-Chang Jung 1.443, Myeong-Woo Cho 1.285 and Beom-Yeol Lee 1.167.
The top five played on the third day the final round robin in matches to 35 caroms. One of the highlights in the final was Tae-Kwan Kim's run of seventeen. However he lost all his matches including against number one Myeong-Woo Cho missing only one carom (35-34).
Myeong-Woo Cho won his four matches in 26, 25, 21 and 13 innings, the lastr with 2.692 average. The number two of the World championship in Sluiskil, where he said that his training rhythm is around seven hours every day, closed with the highest overall average: 1.647.
The final ranking:
1 Myeong-Woo Cho, 1.647 average, highest run 9.
2 Jun-Tae Kim, 1.284, 7.
3 Ju Shin Jung, 1.125, 6.
4 Hae-Jung Chang, 1.253, 8
5 Tae-Kwan Kim, 1.245, 17.
The Junior World championships will be broadcast live by Kozoom.