SPRUNDEL/ROSMALEN - It rarely happens to Dave Christiani that he has such an offday at the billiards, but German Martin Horn, in a great form for weeks now, was a real tormentor this Sunday. ''He really punished me'' said Dave after the painful 40-9 defeat he had to swallow. ''I got a few chances, but he played and he defended well and I couldn't play my own game.''
Partly because of that win by Martin Horn, with a final 13 run, but also thanks to nice wins by Barry van Beers and Gerwin Valentijn for the home team Dekker Keukens, the score remained in balance against Bousema Lochem. Frans van Schaik had first beaten the visitors by a win against Henk Blauwblomme (40-34 in 37), Barry van Beers beat Johan Loncelle 40-37 in 18 after trailing 23-3 in five innings and coming back to 30-33 in 12 (2.222 against 2.055) and Valentijn beat German Stefan Galla 40-22 in 21. Martin Horn's victory against Dave Christiani then brought it all back into balance.
As a result, little changed in the DKM Tools league rankings, where only two matches were played this Sunday: Dekker-Bousema and Post Luchtkanalen-Dallinga. The draw keeps Dekker in shared second place with Cues&Darts, which has played one match less.
Post Luchtkanalen secured its fourth match point out of 14 matches by a good result in the home match against Dallinga.com: 4-4. The standout in that match was Belgian Marc Celen again in the second position at Post Luchtkanalen. The conqueror, in recent weeks, of Johan Loncelle and Kurt Ceulemans among others, now went on to win against yet another Belgian opponent: the recently dethroned Belgian champion Peter De Backer with a generous score 40-20 in 23 innings.
Marc Celen was very pleased with it and commented: ''This is an exceptional win for me. I started the match excellently and was helped a bit when Peter went through clock in the 3rd inning. Thanks to the run from the break, I immediately had a nice lead. Going on, it was a game in which everything went almost perfectly, both offensively and defensively. That explains the result. We are very happy with one match point. We will undoubtedly be relegated, but every point against the top teams is celebrated as a victory. We get a lot of positive support in De Hazelaar from our fans, the referees and the venue owners.''
The other win for Post Luchtkanalen came from Wilco van Wijk, who also stayed well ahead of Berry Dallinga by 40-26 in 41 innings. Two other games were lost for the Brabant team: Jean Paul de Bruijn beat Leslie van Neyen 40-20 in 23, Steven van Acker won from Erwin Hens 40-18 in 24.