Roland Forthomme has his lucky day

BRANDENBURG - The final run, with which Roland Forthomme closed the match against Jean-Christoph Roux was perfectly timed. The Belgian champion finished with eight, but had a handful of luck in his last run. Three of eight caroms were flukes. Therefore he excused after the match he won 40-26.

The shutdown for the Belgian was nearby with a 26-22 backlog, especially because Roux made a very strong impression in the final phase and seemed on his way to victory.

Forthomme had already made an 8-run during the match and did it again at the end, when he had 22 caroms on the sheet in a match that ended so badly for the Frenchman.
,,I would not say three lucky balls’’, said Forthomme after the match. ,,Two and a half, but I fully agree, it was a very good moment.’’

The Belgian champion was one of 16 players remaining of 48, who were launched in the early hours. The sixteen group winners join the sixteen seeded players in the knock-out phase that starts today, Saturday, at 10.30.

Jérôme Barbeillon forced off his qualification in the strongest group: with Spaniard Jose Maria Mas, who first had beat Turkish champion Ahmet Alp. The Frenchman defeated his opponent and won the decisive battle against Mas for the group win 30-15 in 16 innings.

Glenn Hofmann crawled through the eye of the needle against Andreas Efler, who wasted a match point when he got a good position. The Dutchman answered with two caroms for the match.

The Dane Brian Knudsen and Swede Michael Nilsson closled te day in a very long marathon match. The apotheosis was surprising. The big Swede, who made a painfull fall during the match, lost a big margin, when Knudsen fought back with eight after an unprecedented bad start. Knudsen said: ,,In the afternoon match I had the perfect feeling, tonight I had a horrible start.’’

Jérôme Barbeillon qualified as the best player of all for the knockout phase, followed by Jean Paul de Bruijn, who outplayed the German Markus Schönhoff (fifth best average of 48 players) and Czech Jan Hudak in his group.

The top ten winners of the qualification (with averages)
1 Jérôme Barbeillon 1.764
2 Jean Paul de Bruijn 1.578
3 Jef Philipoom 1.538
4 Roland Forthomme 1.333
5 Sameh Sidhom 1.224
6 Radek Novak 1.153
7 Brian Knudsen 1.000
8 Manuel Rui Costa 1.000
9 Cengiz Karaca 0.882
10 Andreas Niehaus 0.882.

The matches for today, Saturday:
10.30:
Kasidokostas-Mancini
Barbeillon-Leppens
Meckx-Rui Costa
Karaca-Tasdemir
Blomdahl-Rudolph
Sidhom-Burgman
Polychronopoulos-Forthomme
Nelin-Sánchez

13.00:
Jaspers Domer
Philipoom-Cenet
Zanetti-Novak
Hofman-Horn
Bury-Niehaus
Knudsen-Coklu
Yüksel-De Bruijn
Carlsen-Caudron.