3-Cushion
MEDELLIN - Torbjörn Blomdahl’s star shines as in his glorious days. Filippos Kasidokostas, who outplayed Marco Zanetti, seems to score on command. Sung-Won Choi shows up with an incredible flair and only Kyung-Roul needed all the luck in the world to win.
The first four of eight quarter-finalists in the World Cup of Medellin meet each other later today at: Torbjörn Blomdahl-Sung-Won Choi and Filippos Kasidokostas-Kyung-Roul Kim.
The lower part of the schedule, including the Belgians Caudron, Merckx and Leppens, Jérémy Bury and Dick Jaspes, start the battle in the second session of this round. The level of the first part, with matches in 12, 14, 16 and 25 innings, will be hard to surpass.
Torbjörn Blomdahl led the parade of world class players with an amazing match against Hyung Bum Hwang. The Swede put his opponent, with runs of 9 and 10, on a backlog of 28-12 after five innings. Seven innings later Blomdahl closed the game with a 9-run, the 8th carom was an incredible beauty: 40-17 in 12.
Filippos Kasidokostas and Marco Zanetti fought a neck-and-neck race to 24-24 in 14 innings. The Greek attaqued to 37-26 in the fifteenth inning with a run of twelve and finished the job on inning later (40-30 in 16 innings).
The fight between Koreans Sung-Won Choi and Jae Ho Cho was a walk in the park for Choi, who stormed to an impressive win. Sung-Won kickstarted the match, then made his opponent to a paper tiger and won, including a run of ten (7th inning) 40-23 in 14 innings.
The most tension showed the match between Kyung-Roul Kim and Colombian favorite Carloman Ortiz. The Korean struggled with his form, couldn’t get his teeth in it and was lucky that his opponent did not manage to finish. The unfortunate Ortiz, supported by his home crowd, failed to make the 40th point.
Kyung-Roul Kim eventually finished, totally undeserved, after an incredible shot. Sander Jonen, former world champion artistique, called it on the Kozoom chat: ,,The lucky shot of the century.’’
Kim won 40-39 in 25 innings.