 Niels Feijen |
NIELS Feijen produced a stunning fight back to defeat Imran Majid and move into the last eight of the 2007 PartyPoker.net World Pool Masters.
Feijen, who was backed by a large home crowd at the Hotel Zuiderduin, Egmond aan Zee, trailed 3-0 in the early stages of the match but recovered to win 8-5.
"I started like a granny," admitted Feijen. "Imran then let me off the hook so I could've been 4-1 down. The big swing came when he missed a seven-ball and I played really well from the middle to the end.
"I have been struggling with my pace the whole week so this was a big relief for me. Let's keep it going."
Majid looked in control in the early stages as he moved around the table comfortably but the match turned at four racks all when Imran had no shot on the opening ball and pushed out. He failed to make his intentions plain to referee Michaela Tabb and resulted in ball-in-hand for Feijen, who grabbed the opportunity to take the lead for the first time at 5-4.
Looking confident, Feijen coasted through the next to increase his lead with his English opponent against it. Majid though, held himself together to run out the next but the momentum was with Feijen.
Looking a different player from his early tentative endeavours, he completed another easy run out to get to the hill at 7-5.
Feijen got to the table in the next but could do nothing with the situation and Majid was forced to play safe. The Dutchman though, took on a great table length bank on the 5 ball which proved to be a match winner as it set up the run out for a tremendous come-from-behind victory for Feijen.
In the next first round match, Taiwan's former double World Champion Wu Chia-ching fired out a warning shot as he made light work of Canadian Tyler Edey, winning 8-1.
In the final match of the afternoon, Thomas Engert (Germany) and Malta's Tony Drago completed their third Masters first round match and this time it was Engert, the 2004 champion, who got the better of it winning 8-4.
It was a tight match until Engert got the better of the safety exchanges to close out Drago and secure a quarter final berth.
Full Results
Niels Feijen (Ned) 8 – 6 Imran Majid (Eng)
Wu Chia-ching (TPE) 8 – 1 Tyler Edey (CAN)
Thomas Engert (GER) 8 - 4 Tony Drago (MLT)
