3-Cushion
GOYANG - The star of Belgian billiard Frédéric Caudron has risen to a peak in the third year of the Korean PBA league. The Belgian, who turns 54 this month, won today, Wednesday, the 18th PBA tournament since its inception in Goyang. For Caudron himself, it was his fourth victory in the circuit. He beat Korean Jae-ho Cho in the final 4-1 with a fantastic 3,550 on average. With the victory in the final, Caudron set a record in the PBA: the Belgian won 14 games in a row in the last two tournaments. Therefore, he earned 150,000 euros in three weeks of PBA in two tournament wins and 3,000 euros for the best match of the tournament, which he had saved for the last match against Cho.
The Belgian's performance in the latter part of 2021 and the start of 2022 was really impressive. Caudron won 14 games over two tournaments (Crown Hatai and Nonghyup Card) without losing one. Never before has a player done that in the two and a half years that PBA exists.
Caudron won those fourteen matches with 46 won sets and 12 lost sets. He defeated ten Koreans and four non-Koreans Eddy Leppens (3-1), Carlos Anguita (3-1), David Zapata (4-1) and Kostas Papakonstantinou (3-1) in these two events.
In the last two games of the previous tournament, Caudron scored 4-1 twice against Dong-koong Kang (2,179) and David Zapata (1,750). In the last two of the tournament that ended today, the score was 4-0 against Jong-joo Lee (2.400) and 4-1 against Jae-ho Cho (15-6, 15-3, 11-15, 15-12, averages 3,550/1,947).
The two final players were by far the best to remain in the final of this fifth tournament of the season. Frédéric Caudron won in the six matches before the final twice 3-0, twice 3-1, once 3-2, in the semi-final 4-0 and in the final 4-1: a total of 46 sets won, of which the best games were in his last two matches.
Jae-ho Cho won his matches with magnificent averages: 2x 2,450, 2,250, 1,833, 2,143 and 2,045, but in the final against Caudron he did not reach the high scores needed to threaten the superlative Caudron.
It looks like the Belgian has found his top level after almost two years (948 days since his transfer from the UMB to the PBA). With four tournament wins, he is by far the best and most deserving player on the circuit. Caudron won his last tournament at the UMB on March 3, 2019 in a Surival 3C Masters in Incheon, where he defeated Marco Zanetti, Eddy Merckx and Dick Jaspers in the four-player final and earned 50,000 dollars. He said goodbye as three-time world champion (1999, Bogota, 2013, Antwerp, 2017 Santa Cruz) and winner of 21 World Cups. He then left definitely for the PBA, where he played his first tournament in the first week of June 2019: Filippos Kasidokostas was the winner, Caudron was eliminated in the round of 16 finalists.
It was a modest run-up to the successes he has achieved since that start: Caudron, who was in a final match four times, won them all: the 4th, 9th, 17th and 18th PBA tournament. In the finals he defeated Min-gu Kang, Filippos Kasidokostas, David Zapata and Jae-ho Cho.
Frédéric Caudron, 4th PBA win since the start of the league
Frédéric Caudron, the better of Jae-ho Cho in final match
Frédéric Caudron, two PBA wins in three weeks, 150.000 euros