3-Cushion
ANTALYA - The final phase of the World Cup in Antalya will be played tonight without the dethroned number one in the world, with three Koreans, only one Turk, the new number one in the world, the overall World Cup winner of last year, one French and one Spaniard.
Four players from the top five of the world survived in the eighth finals, six players from the top will battle for four places in the semis tonight.
Frédéric Caudron was in the two sessions for the eighth finals the best with his victory against Lütfi Cenet and his average of 2.571, one player (Ryuuji Umeda) played two average exactly, nevertheless he was eliminated by Jérémy Bury 3-1.
Three players performed with runs of ten and more today: Umeda made twelve, Sánchez and Tasdemir ten.
Glenn Hoffman, the revelation of the tournament and youngest player in this round, could leave the arena with his head in the clouds. He was able to threaten Torbjörn Blomdahl until 2-2, but in the end the Swede showed to have the best killer instinct (15-10 in the deciding set).
Tayfun Tasdemir felt himself in high spirits as the only Turk who survived. He knocked down his opponent Eddy Merckx, knowing that for the Belgian, who played one average, things were going belly up all the game. Kyung-Roul Kim needed five sets to shake off Kostas Papakonstantinou, the only Greek who still was in the tournament.
The Koreans, still with three men in battle (Kyung-Roul Kim, Sung-Won Choi and Dong-Koong Kang) are in the spotlights again tonight. Two of the Asians meet each others: Sung-Won Choi and Dong Koong Kang. The most famous of them, Kyung-Roul Kim, will meet Frédéric Caudron.
The full schedule:
Sung-Won Choi-Dong Koong Kang
Dani Sánchez-Jérémy Bury
Torbjörn Blomdahl-Tayfun Tasdemir
Frédéric Caudron-Kyung-Roul Kim.