Lee Vann Corteza
As Day Three of the International Open 9-Ball tournament was drawing to a close, 24 competitors of the original 128, representing 14 countries, were battling to earn a spot among the Final 16, which would play single-elimination through to the end. The eight winners’ side battles happened first, advancing the eight winners, undefeated to the Final 16. The losers in those matches, eight of them, moved to the loss side and met up with the eight remaining players on that side of the bracket.
For the first time, a match appeared on the schedule which would pit two potential opponents at the Mosconi Cup next week in a match at the International Open. And then, there was a second one. Both matches were on the loss side of the Open 9-Ball bracket; UK’s Jayson Shaw would play USA’s Tyler Styer, as USA’s Fedor Gorst squared off against Albania’s Eklent Kaci.
Among the other qualifying matches on the loss side last night lay the potential for two brothers to advance to the Final 16. Albania’s Kaci brothers, Eklent (the elder) and Kledio had both advanced to the last qualifying round on the winners’ side of the bracket and lost. They were not scheduled to play each other in their final qualifying round on the loss side.
But let’s back up a bit. The last qualifying, winners’ side round got underway just ahead of 3 p.m., yesterday (Nov. 20). The matches weren’t really close, with the eight winners allowing their opponents, on average, between six (four times) and nine (double-hill, once).
It was Lee Vann Corteza, who’d sent just sent Fedor Gorst to the loss side, who battled to victory in the double-hill match against Robbie Capito. Singapore’s Aloysius Yapp, who’d just defeated Sanjin Pehlivanovic, got by Wiktor Zielinski 10-8 to join the Final 16. Germany’s Joshua Filler and Moritz Neuhausen faced each other in the qualifying round, which eventually (10-7) qualified Filler.
Niels Feijen
BCA Hall of Famer Neils Feijen set a tone right away in his winners’ side, qualifying round versus Jayson Shaw by taking a very quick 4-0 lead. Shaw would mount a run that got close at 4-3, 5-4 and tie things up at 5-5, but he never did get out in front. At that 5-5 juncture, Feijen put together another four-rack run to reach the hill first. Shaw won the 15th rack, but Feijen closed it out by winning the 16th.
Two Spaniards joined the winners’ side qualifiers. Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz defeated Georgi Georgiev 10-7 to do so, while countryman David Alcaide downed one of the Kaci brothers (Kledio) 10-6. Meanwhile, older brother Eklent was being defeated 10-6 by Carlo Biado, who joined the Final 16. Last, but of course, by no means least, Greece’s Alex Kazakis defeated Shane Van Boening 10-6.
Of the eight that moved to the loss side for a second chance at qualifying for the Final 16, half of them did so. Eklent Kaci was not one of them, as he was the first of the eight to be eliminated in the potential Mosconi Cup preview, by Fedor Gorst 10-2. Kaci’s younger brother, Kledio did make it, with a 10-5 victory over Tommy Tokoph, who’d followed a loss to Shane Van Boening on the winners’ side with surprising four-match, loss-side run that had eliminated BJ Ussery, Jr. and John Morra and survived a double-hill challenge from Singapore’s Nicholas Tan Guo En.
And speaking of ‘surprising runs,’ Bulgaria’s Georgi Georgiev’s run on the winners’ side of the bracket had sent Bader Alawadhi, Albin Ouschan and Tyler Styer to the loss side, before Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz sent him over in the final qualifying round. Georgiev came over and defeated Austria’s Mario He 10-4 to join the Final 16.
Lithuania’s Pijus Labutis stopped Robbie Capito from advancing, defeating him 10-4 to join the Final 16 crowd. Wiktor Zielinski followed his winners’ side loss to Aloysius Yapp with a 10-6 win over Gregorio Sanchez to advance as well. Moritz Neuhausen followed up his winners’ side loss to fellow countryman Josh Filler with a victory that eliminated US Mosconi Cup team member, Billy Thorpe 10-8.
At this level of competition, it’s (again) difficult to precisely define a ‘surprise,’ but the elimination of both Shane Van Boening and Jayson Shaw came as a surprise to more than just a few observers. Van Boening was eliminated in the final, loss-side qualifying round 10-6 by Austria’s Max Lechner, who’d arrived to meet him after eliminating, in order, Roberto Gomez and Mosconi Cup team captain Sky Woodward.
In one of the more entertaining matches of the entire day, two potential opponents in the upcoming Mosconi Cup, Tyler Styer and Jayson Shaw, battled to join the Final 16. Styer had lost a third-round, winners’ side battle to Georgi Georgiev and won two on the loss side against Eric Roberts and Naoyuki Oi to draw Shaw, coming off of his lost to Neils Feijen.
They battled back and forth to rack #13 with Styer ahead by one 7-6, when easily one of the strangest moments in their or any match seen so far became a critical turning point. Shaw was looking at a 4-6 combination shot, the balls lined up straight on a long rail. He took the shot, which, as planned, allowed the 4-ball to bounce off the rail and come out for a follow-up shot, but the 6-ball rattled in the hole. Styer took the shot that Shaw had more or less given him, aiming at the 4-ball to drop the 6-ball in the hole. The 4-ball sauntered across the felt, hit the 6-ball and both balls jammed in the hole.
Light laughter and smiles from spectators and both players as Shaw stepped up to ‘fix’ this two-balls-in-a-hole issue. The cue ball executed its journey to the 4-ball perfectly. Touched it and in some very strange physics kind of way, jammed both balls a hairs-breadth further into the hole. It was Styer who cleared the hole and went on to take a two-game lead at 8-6. Four matches later, Styer won match, ahead by the same two games at 10-8.
Styer drew Carlo Biado in the opening round of single-elimination, the featured match in the Simonis Aramith TV arena, which was scheduled for a noon start, today (Thursday). The other seven, first-round matches, all scheduled for noon, played out in the adjacent areas and be viewed via PayPerView by going to the International Open Web site and logging into the PayPerView link. – Sanchez-Ruiz vs. Labutis, Alcaide/Zielinski, Kazakis/Nuehausen, Vann Corteza/Georgiev, Yapp/Kledio Kaci, Filler/Lechner and Gorst/Feijen.
So, the event moves towards the end with four Mosconi Cup competitors in contention, two each from each team; Styer and Gorst from Team USA and the Spaniards, Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz and David Alcaide from Team Europe.
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