3-Cushion
LOMMEL - The spectacular launch of Peter De Backer and Eddy Leppens in the second evening session, two wonderful runs of ten for Kurt Ceulemans, the presenter and entertainer in Lommel, for one day shining at the table and eventually the placement of Peter De Backer and Eddy Leppens.
Day three of the preliminaries in the Superprestige, summarized in a few lines.
The organizer (Eddy Leppens) may focus just for one more day on things in and around the arena, but should be ready on Friday for his next mission: the quarterfinals of the Superprestige: six players have advanced now.
Today (Thursday) the last qualifying round is played with Frédéric Caudron, Peter Ceulemans, Martin Spoormans and Steven van Acker.
Eddy Merckx and Ronnie Daniels (averaging 1.739 and 1.594), Roland Forthomme and Frank de Groof (1.463 and 1.432) had already reached the final round. The numbers five and six, on the third evening session, were Peter De Backer and Eddy Leppens. No major surprises, only Kurt Ceulemans did a valiant effort, beating Thomas Broux (40-36 in 33), but he was eliminated in the last session by exceptionally strong Eddy Leppens. The match, with some high runs (9 and 8), some bells and whistles in the audience, was dashed off with a 40-20 in only 16 innings.
Peter De Backer was undefeated at the end with a winning start against Kurt Ceulemans (40-32 in 33), a finish against Thomas Broux (40-30 in 29) and in between an exciting match against Eddy Leppens. The home player started with seven, immediately responded by an 11-run of De Backer. The match winner attacked later in the match to (36-27, 15 innings), and cleared the job in 19 for 40-31.
De Backer is the provisional number two in the ranks with six match points and 1.481 the provisional. Eddy Merckx leads the six final players so far. Eddy Leppens has, despite his loss, the best average over three days: 1.790.