3-Cushion
VALENCIA - Orie Hida, world star in ladies three cushion, is the record holder with four world titles, achieved in 2004, 2006, 2008 and after a stop in her career in 2017. The Japanese will turn 44 in Valencia within two days, shortly after the World championship. That is eight years older than Therese Klompenhouwer, the Dutch who defeated Hida two times for the most coveted championship in the last three years. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the two best players in the world both are in the semi-finals, on their way to another heroic final?
Two last rivals can still prevent that race: Cambodian media star Sruong Pheavy and Japanese Ayako Sakai. The South Americans have been eliminated, the Europeans have only Therese Klompenhouwer left in the last four, but the Dutch is facing the Asian forces: one world star and two dreaded outsiders. The Dutch leading lady excels by an incredible regularity in this tournament, with matches that always fluctuate around one on average. She did it again against Mi A Kim, the last Korean in the battle, eliminated by Klompenhouwer 30-22 in 26 innings. The final of the match was impressive: Klompenhouwer finished with three, the first point of which was a hard and pure short-short-short shot.
Orie Hida did even better in the next round against Gülsen Degener with the best match in this tournament so far. The early run of five and the final run of five outplayed the last of two Turkish contenders for the podium, 30-15 in 20 innings and 1,500 on average. Therese Klompenhouwer now undoubtedly knows that she has to be very strong to achieve another world title.
Ayako Sakai is the unknown in the foursome for the final day: two wins against Jaimie Buelens so far and in the quarter finals against German Steffi Daske, who remained in balance until 7-6 and then couldn't keep up: 15-8, 21-11 and finally 30-16 in 39. Sruong Pheavy is on the way to the world top for a few years. The Cambodian lost in the semi-final last year to a brilliant Orie Hida, who played 1,765, but stumbled in the final over Klompenhouwer. Sruong Pheavy goes on a second chance and now faces the Dutch title defender in the semi-final. The other semi-final is the Japanese clash between Hida and Sakai.
The matches:
11.00: Klompenhouwer-Pheavy
13.00: Hida-Sakai.
The first round of the knockout, with sixteen players, already underlined the big difference in this final field. Seven of the eight group winners went on to the quarter-finals. Steffi Daske, who didn't impress in the preliminaries, was the only player to surprise one of the group winners. Güzin Mujde Karakasli missed the start (15-10), fought back for a while to 17-16, but had no best final part and lost 30-21 in 39. All other group winners went on quite well to the best eight. Only Jaimie Buelens opposed Ayako Sakai until the end and was only four caroms short: 30-26 in 40.
Orie Hida and Therese Klompenhouwer, the two top favorites, both had a walk-over against Céline Jacques (30-11 in 30) and Marianne Mortensen (30-14 in 28) and were by far the best players on average. Sruong Pheavy left Dutch Joke Breur on an early and hopeless 14-1 in 17 innings and finished it off after 40 innings (30-16). Estela Cardoso gave the home crowd reason to cheer against Helga Mitterböck (30-21 in 54) and Mi A Kim beat Jackeline Perez (30-16 in 40). Gülsen Degener was mentally the better of Irena Hambalkova, whom she gave just a few chances throughout the match (30-24 in 36).
The striking feature in these eight games was that Therese Klompenhouwer and Orie Hida, in this phase in which the tables were a less difficult, were the only two players who scored over 1,000 on average (1,071 for the Dutch, 1,000 for the Japanese). High runs were also lacking in this round: Daske, Klompenhouwer and Kim with 6.
Therese Klompenhouwer outplayed the last Korean in the quarters
Sruong Pheavy from Cambodja: on her way to a world podium again
Ayako Sakai, the dark horse in the last four