Thirty-nine young men and nineteen young women began their individual journeys towards history today in Willingen, Germany. The resort of Sauerland Stern is the host venue, tucked into the popular ski country that has been showered with snow the last three days.
This is a double-elimination format, so no one will face elimination until Wednesday, but many have already crossed over into the danger zone. Notable among those is Mary Rakin, last year's World Champion, who lost today 7-4 to Denise Wilkinson of New Zealand. Landon Shuffett came here accompanied by the high hopes of many Americans, only to fall 9-5 in his first match against Tomoya Iima of Japan.
But it is still early days here and everyone has at least a single barrel left so there is no feeling of hopelessness to be found as yet. The players are still adjusting to their travel to get here and the venue itself, and these adjustments will begin to take hold and firm their games on Wednesday.
There are a lot of ways to follow the latest happenings of this event. For one, table #1 is a show table and the matches there are broadcast live over the internet. As well, the scores are updated in real-time at WPA-tour.com as are the brackets. There is a link at WPA-tour.com that will take you to the live streaming video.
This is also the week and site of the annual WPA Board and General Assembly meetings and we will keep you up to date with any breaking news that may emerge from these conferences. Of course, we will update you daily as to interesting match news and the progress of our players throughout the week.
