Robbie Capito
International Straight Pool Open gets underway with seven round-robin ‘flights’
When the folks who scheduled the four, opening-round matches of the International 10-Ball “Big Foot Challenge” Invitational got together to decide who’d be playing whom and when, they saved what they rightfully expected to be the best of the four for last. Spread out over eight hours, the last of those matches, scheduled for prime time, 8 p.m. last night (Saturday), would feature World Champion Fedor Gorst against the guy that had gone undefeated to win the International Open 9-Ball event just over 24 hours earlier, Aloysius Yapp. When it got underway, however, it seemed as though a lot of folks didn’t ‘get the memo.’ Although the Simonis Aramith TV Arena wasn’t empty by any stretch of the imagination, it was surprising to see so many empty seats, along with areas where more seats could have been added.
There was a lot going on in the areas surrounding the TV Arena throughout the day because in addition to the four matches of the “Big Foot Challenge,” The International Straight Pool Open, formerly the Peter Burrows’ American 14.1 Straight Pool Championship, got underway with its seven, ‘round robin’ flights of six players each. That, along with the fact that after experiencing the ‘slow roll’ of the Open 9-Ball event over five days, spectators may have been lulled into a ‘plenty of time to catch some action’ mindset that put the marquee matchup between Gorst and Yapp on a back burner early and was promptly forgotten about until it was too late, or over.
The “Big Foot Challenge” started at noon yesterday and would, before it was over for the day, feature two, double-hill matches out of the scheduled four. First up were Hong Kong’s Robbie Capito and Canada’s John Morra, which, with a 10-6 win, sent Capito to the semifinals against Gorst at noon today (Sunday). At 2:45 (again, yesterday) the Philippines’ Lee Vann Corteza and Lithuania’s Pijus Labutis got underway in the first of the opening-rounds’ two double-hill matches. Vann Corteza closed it out and advanced to the other semifinal against Shane Van Boening, who’d eliminated Roberto Gomez in the other double-hill match that had gotten underway. The Van Boening and Capito semifinal is scheduled for 3 p.m today.
Fedor Gorst
They’re hard to figure, these so-called marquee matchups. So much potential and anticipation going into them that it can be difficult to meet the understandably elevated expectations. There was a lot of entertaining shot making in the first-round match between Gorst and Yapp, but one of the significant factors that played into the result was the back and forth safety play, which demonstrated each of their skills in cue-ball control when dropping a target ball was not the object of the game, at the time. Lot of that going on in this match and a lot of audience appreciation (enthusiastic applause) for it when it happened, even when it occasionally went back and forth to the point of testing spectator patience.
Another significant factor was the ‘break and run’ scores for each of them. As it turned out, a 3-1 advantage for Gorst. There were a number of unforced errors for both of them, but they seemed, in the long run, to have hurt Yapp more than Gorst. But if what you were looking for was eyewitness confirmation of the skills that have made Gorst the world champion that he is, this was a good match to watch.
In the beginning, in rack #1, it looked as though it was going to be a long night, because following Yapp’s break, they played safe five times in a row, trying to get the 1-ball into a hole. Good safety puzzles for the shooter to figure out, time after time. Gorst broke the logjam and made an early combo on the 9-ball off his own break to get up 2-0.
There are what’s known as ‘critical junctures’ in all of sports and in pool, that juncture is defined, more or less, by score differentials and in some cases, a particular shot that can be recognized as a ‘turning point.’ Yapp faced a ‘soft’ critical juncture when he broke and ran rack #3 to get on the board, managing, in that moment, to maintain excitement and anticipation for everyone. He’d face a couple more before it was over.
And then, Gorst went to work on a five-rack run from which Yapp – as cool, calm and collected as he can appear – never recovered. Gorst broke and ran three of the five racks in that run, including the one in the middle that leaped right over another critical juncture for Yapp, who was suddenly down 5-1.
Yapp being Yapp, his win of the 9th rack, prompted by an uncharacteristic scratch by Gorst, kept a few hopes alive, but Yapp made an unforced ‘hanger’ error in the next rack and spoiled the comeback party. It was, in effect, over at 7-2, though Yapp would win the game that followed Gorst’s arrival ‘on the hill’ to make it 9-3 at the time. In a St. Augustine ‘minute,’ Gorst closed it out and advanced to his semifinal against Corteza, which should commence within the next matter of minutes after you read this.
Still time to catch all or part of that action and the rest of today’s “Big Foot Challenge” Action on the AccuStats’ PayPerView by linking to the International Open Web site or AccuStats directly.
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