3-Cushion
OOSTERHOUT - After a battle with more than 300 players, Dave Christiani is the winner of the Royal Pro Three Cushion Cup. The Limburg player defeated Kurt Ceulemans, one of the three Belgians in the semi-finals of the tournament. The preliminaries were played at 12 locations in Europe. The 24 finalists met each other in De Eekhoorn in Oosterhout this Saturday. The matches were played over sets of 7 in the knock-out phase, the final was to the best of 9.
In the final, Kurt Ceulemans took an early lead (2-1), but after Christiani's equalizer and the 3-2, the match was decided by a great finish of the winner. In the sixth set, Christiani started with a 6 (6-0) in the seventh and last, he ran out to 7-3 for a final score of 5-2.
Dave Christiani was rewarded by the main prize of 2000 euros, Kurt Ceulemans took 1000, Francis Forton and Steven van Acker, the losing semi-finalists, 700 euros. Frans van Schaik, Sander Jonen and Jerry Hermans, the organizers of the Three Cushion Cup, were very pleased with the course and announced a sequel in 2019.
On the final day, the 24 players first competed in eight groups of three, the winners went on to the knockout. The best-known players who were eliminated were Andreas Efler (by Francis Forton) and Kostas Kokkoris (by Dave Christiani). Also Frans van Schaik and Jack Wijnen were knocked-out in the early rounds.
In the quarter-finals, Jerry Hermans, one of the organizers, was eliminated 4-1 by Dave Christiani. Kurt Ceulemans dealed with the unknown Greek Kyriakos Mpelderopoulos 4-2. Francis Forton defeated Frank Martens 4-2 and Steven van Acker beat Hans Handgraaf 4-1.
In the semi-finals, Christiani qualified after a 4-2 win over Forton and Ceulemans with the same score against Van Acker.
The finalists Kurt Ceulemans and Dave Christiani
The eight players for the quarters