Albin Oushcan (Photo courtesy of Alison Chang)
The 24 years old Albin Ouschan of Austria has just won his first big tournament of his career. Albin Ouschan overpowered the Canadian top player John Morra (CAN) with 11:8 and obtained the crown of the 2015 China Open.
John Morra did not have smooth sailing in the tournament. To the contrary, he lost his first match with Vietnamese Do Thekien 5:7. And had to make his way through the loser’s side. He came up with an impressing performance, overcame Marc Bijsterbosch (NED) 11:8, Warren Kiamco (PHI) 11:9, Fu Jianbo (CHN) 11:10 and Nick Van Den Berg of Netherlands with 11:8, booked a seat in the final match with Albin Ouschan.
Ouschan’s first match played against Jalal Yousef from Chile. Ouschan ended up well, and defeated Yousef with 9:6. In the next match, Ouschan played Che-Wei Fu from Taiwan, both players played solid, however, Fu played a bit better, Ouschan lost 8:9 in the end.
Then Ouschan faced the Filipino player Johann Chua, it was a really tough match with ups and downs for Ouschan. At 7:7, Chua made a big mistake which put Ouschan in the lead, and won the match with 9:7 to qualified for the last 32.
His first match in the single elimination had to deal with Ping-Chung Ko (TPE). In the match, Ko had problems with the break, in which he always got the white kicked out of position, on the other side, Ouschan’s break was almost perfect and ran out his racks, and his safety was also good, Ouschan took down Ko with 11:7.
Then he against Mateusz Sniegocki from Poland which Ouschan was 3:7 down, then everything seems turned lucky for him, and he closed the book on the match to win with 11:8. And Ouschan continued to made his way with victories over Lee Vann Corteza 11:6.
In the semifinals, Ouschan met a young Chinese 8-ball player Chu Bingjie, both players are played absolutely perfect and run out about 6 racks each, nevertheless, Ouschan was always 1 or 2 racks behind Chu until at 8:8, Ouschan played two perfect jump shot to make it to the final, send Chu Bingjie home with 11:8.
The championship match could be the youngest final ever between the two. In rack 7, jumped the 1-ball, a lucky combo 9 put Ouschan to get a 5:2 lead over Morra, and then two of them run out every rack to 10:7.
Although Morra extends the match by winning his breaking rack, Albin was the more consistent player when he ran out the 19th rack to win the champion with 11:8.
“I feel just great! Still can’t believe what I did that all the hard work finally paid off! One of the happiest days in my life!” said Albin after the match.
With this victory, Albin Ouschan becomes the youngest-ever China Open Champion. And probably be the new World No.1 in the rankings.
