3-Cushion
HURGHADA - The position of Frédéric Caudron on the world ranking will be untouchable after the World Cup in Hurghada. The Belgian world champion and world's ranking leader was one of the few top players that survived the battlefield in the final rounds. The main competitors, Torbjörn Blomdahl, Jérémy Bury, Filippos Kasidokostas, Marco Zanetti, Dick Japsers and Kyung-Roul have been sent home, what means that Caudron's advantage on the ranking will grow further at the end of the year.
Two Belgians, two surprising Vietnamese, two Turks and two Koreans meet each other in the quarter finals later today (17.00). Frédéric Caudron and Eddy Merckx seem the big favorites for victory at first sight. The Belgians closed two rounds so far with fantastic averages: Merckx 2.857, Caudron 2.580.
With Torbjörn Blomdahl (no chance against Cenet), Marco Zanetti (outplayed by Vinh Ly The) and Filippos Kasidokostas, as in the World championship final in Antwerp dazzled by Caudron (40-20 in 14) three star players disappeared from the stage in last round. The Swede, already the overall winner of the World Cup, was nailed on his chair by a run of ten (22-10) and could only get his teeth in the match in the final innings, when the show was over (40-29 in 21).
Frédéric Caudron, by far the best in 2013, closed his match against Kasidokostas with a run of eleven. The tough Korean warrior Vinh Ly The attacked in the first part against Zanetti with thirteen and finished 40-30 (23 innings), one of the most glorious moments in his career.
Eddy Merckx has rapidly found his rhythm in the World Cup after a few unfortunate losses in competitions. He looks well in the World Cup and out for a vengeance, because it is very important to score in Hurghada for the double world champion. He's certrainly balancing on the edge of the top twelve after some years in top five, but already showed an unprecedented eagerness in his first matches in Hurghada.
The second Vietnamese still in the tournament, the very youthful looking Quyet Chien Tran, crawled twice through the eye of the needle. On the first day, he survived the overtime against Bury (3-2), in his next appearance, he killed Jean Paul de Bruijn in the penalty's 6-3, after the Dutchman had led throughout the whole match sovereign.
And finally there are the two Koreans. Sung-Won Choi makes a very strong impression, like the two Belgians, with victories in 20 and in 15 innings, the last against Papakonstantinou. The small and friendly, 30-year-old Bum Hyung Hwang, who first outplayed his countryman Kyung-Roul Kim and now beat Turk Uymaz (34 innings), is living in the same region as Sung-Won Choi in the south part of Korea and is the number 18 of the Korean ranking.
The matches for the quarter finals (17.00):
Merckx-Heo
Choi-Tran
The Ly-Tasdemir
Caudron-Hwang.