Carom
NICE - The first day of the Crystal Kelly tournament in Nice was almost historical. Three of the four matches ended in a draw. That never happened before in the eighteen year history of the tournament. Dani Sánchez finished with a run of three in the equalizer against Semih Sayginer, Filipos Kasidokostas with five in his duel with Frédéric Caudron and Frans van Kuijk with a run of six against Eddy Merckx. The only winner on the first day was Dick Jaspers against Peter Ceulemans.
Thanks to the personal archives of the Dutchman Bert van Manen and Allan Lys Jensen from Danmark, repleted with some information from Peter Ceulemans, Peter de Backer, Roman Bachmaier and Stefan Hillvin, we recorded a few notable equalizing innings in the three-cushion.
The highest run ever (according to Bert van Manen) was made by Jelle Pijl in the Dutch league. He needed 13 caroms in his match against Arie Weyenburg to equalize in 2004 and managed to make a great finish. Also remarkable was a run of Tayfun Tasdemir in a match which he lost 50-26, but in the equalizer Tayfun made 21 caroms.
Jef Philipoom lost a match against Raymond Ceulemans 50-31, but made a run of 18 in his equalizing inning. Three years ago, Frédéric Caudron and Eddy Merckx met each other in the Superprestige in Belgium. Merckx finished first in the match of 40 caroms, by leaving Caudron on 21 points. Caudron appeared to the table for the equalizer and made a run of 18, which brought him to 39 points.
Raymond Ceulemans finished the match in the quarter finals of a VES ranking tournament in 2001/2002 against Peter de Backer (40-30). De Backer made the ten points he needed for the draw and won the second run of penalty shoot-outs. De Backer also won the tournament in the final against Roland Forthomme.
The Austrian Andreas Horvath had a remarkable finish in the Bundesliga in 2003 in his match for BSV München against Jerôme Barbeillon. The Frenchman had finished (40-29), Horvat equalized with eleven.
Michael Nilsson equalized a match against Lars Becklén in the Swedish championship, ten years ago, with a run of ten.
Does anyone have other notable equzlizers? Mail to frits@kozoom.com