PORTO - Top Dutch billiard player Dick Jaspers faces a challenging period in which he has to defend his top world ranking. The 3rd World Cup of the year opens on Monday and will be played in Porto (Portugal) from Monday, June 26 to Sunday, July 2. Jaspers has now held the top spot in the rankings continuously for 237 weeks (more than four-and-a-half years), making him tennis equivalent of Roger Federer's record. The Dutch player must keep up a hard fight to keep his place, as he defends twice 80 points at each of the next two World Cups in Porto and Veghel, gained by victories in Ankara and Las Vegas 2022.
That amounts a total of 160 points. For the moment, the Dutchman leads with 443 points ahead of Marco Zanetti with 383 (60 points lead), Torbjörn Blomdahl with 362, Tayfun Tasdemir with 350, Myung Woo Cho with 325 and Eddy Merckx with 317.
Following Tayfun Taşdemir's victories in Las Vegas (USA) and Torbjörn Blomdahl in Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam), 149 players will be in action next week at the Pavillon Dragon Caixa under the shadow of the FC Porto stadium.
The 14 ranked players are, in order, Dick Jaspers, Marco Zanetti, Tayfun Taşdemir, Eddy Merckx, Torbjörn Blomdahl, Haeng-Jik Kim, Sameh Sidhom, Myung-woo Cho, Jérémy Bury, Quyet Chien Tran, Nikos Polychronopoulos, Jung-han Heo, Jun-tae Kim and Martin Horn. The continental wildcard goes to the CPB in the person of Colombian Pedro Gonzalez, while the organization's two wildcards go to Jose Miguel Soares and Rui Manuel Costa.
Dick Jaspers won the last edition in Porto in 2019 and has even won 4 of the 16 World Cups organized in Portugal in history. The time in Portugal is one hour earlier than in Western Europe, so the matches start at 11am local time, 12am in Western Europe, on the first three days and then at 10am local time (11am in Western Europe) on the 4th day.
The usual ranking points are at stake in Porto: 80-54-36-26-18-10-8. AfreecaTV will stream the whole tournament, with English commentary during the main tournament (last four days).
The Dutch delegation consists of nine players, the Belgians will enter with six.
