Mario He, Skyler Woodward and Shane van Boening
With the Dynamic Billard Leende Open 2018 underway here in Leende Netherlands, there was relief for some top seeds on day one. Austria’s Mario He the current European number one had a great escape in his first-round match today against the Dutchman, Tim De Ruyter. It was a close encounter with the score line level at 6-6 when Mario found an extra gear after a poor shot from De Ruyter and eventually got over the line with a score 9-7. Chasing Mario in the rankings is Albania’s Eklent Kaci, who, with a decent result here in Leende will overtake Mario to claim first spot on the European rankings. Eklent has laid down his marker here with a routine victory over a Spanish newcomer Juan Antonio Pina 9-6 and now awaits the young Portuguese Samuel Santos at 3pm local time Friday.
The Americans came to town for this stop of the European 9-ball tour and they have a lot to gain here with some decent results. The USA Mosconi cup team is decided from the eight Americans who are here, so the pressure is on for them to perform. Tyler Styer came unstuck when meeting the experienced Karol Skowerski in his first match. Karol, with bags of experience, proved too much to handle for the young American winning in fine style 9-4 and now leaving the American a mountain to climb as he now faces the “Italian Stallion” Fabio Petroni in a must win match on the loser’s side Friday.
Oscar Dominguez is another American with an uphill climb, after losing to Austria’s Maximillian Lechner 8-9 and then winning against Saudi’s Amer Hadi Alderbani in a late match Thursday, he will face Germany’s Ruben Frick in a do or die match at 3pm Friday.
With USA’s Shane Van Boening, Skyler Woodward, Billy Thorpe, Mitch Ellerman and Shane McMinn all through on the winner’s side, there’s still some jockeying for those team places yet.
Corey Deuel will face Poland’s Wiktor Zielinski in a mouth-watering match on Friday at 1:30pm. The up and coming Zielinski will be eager to take down a legend like Corey and has some form of his own as Wiktor already has a Eurotour title under his belt while Corey is visiting the Eurotour for the first time.
Spain’s Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz had Germany’s Joshua Filler all over the place in their first-round match. Filler raced off to a 6-2 lead only to watch as the Spaniard pulled back rack after rack and left Filler sitting on the same 6 racks he already had with the Sanchez winning the match 9-6.
England’s “Granite” Mark Gray could not stop Mohammed-Hassan Baabad from Saudi Arabia inflicting a shock result. Trailing 3-8 against the Saudi, it looked like the “Granite” was showing his namesake and got the score back to 6-8 before a shaky and nervous Baabad, finally finished the rack needed to seal a great victory for himself and the Saudi team here in Leende. Tomorrow the tournament continues with matches from loser's round 1 tomorrow at 09:00 CET.
Friday through Sunday, EPBF will show two feature matches LIVE on the EPBF Facebook page. The complete tournament is shown on kozoom.com for premium pass holders.
The event is hosted by the European Governing Body for Pool, the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) and organised by International Billiard Promotion (IBP). Play starts Thursday at 09:00 local time, for further information and reference please go to the federation website www.epbf.com under the Eurotour tab. You can also visit us on our Facebook page or check out the EPBF YouTube channel for regular news clips or contact our press office press@epbf.com.
