3-Cushion
VILA NOVA DE GAIA - The scoreboard for the knock out stage was ready in the room in wich Farouk Barki, the UMB sportsdirector, is leading the tournament. The Belgian Eddy Merckx, last week's winner of the Superprestige in his country, walked to the dressing room in the early hours to prepare for his first match in the tournament against Adnan Yüksel.
Torbjörn Blomdahl against Heriberto Aristazabal will be a deciding match in any case and probably will be the premature end for the Swedisch multiple world. Dani Sánchez against Merlin Romero, Martin Horn against Raimond Burgman, Marco Zanetti later on against Nikos Polychronopoulos, Tayfun Tasdemir against Ryuuji Umeda, Lütfi Cenet against Eddy Leppens: there are a lot of interesting, but also crucial matches on the role today.
The first day has shown that this World championship is not different from previous editions. The start is more than a warm-up, for most of the top players the step to a wonderful tournament, but for others an obstacle to earn the qualifying for the top sixteen.
Frédéric Caudron yesterday had a brilliant start (2.352 average), Jérémy Bury (1.739), Dick Jaspers (1.666), Raimond Burgman (1.500), Dani Sánchez (1.481) and Filippos Kasidokostas (1.428) had a good kick-off, Heriberto Aristazabal (2.000) and Merlin Romero (1.500) a surprising opening and Torbjörn Blomdahl (0.857) started with a painful loss.
Today (Thursday, from 10.00 Portuguese time), the remaining 24 matches will determine the top sixteen players for the knockout phase.
The schedule for the first session: 10.00: Eddy Merckx-Adnan Yüksel, Marco Zanetti-Quoc Nguyen Nguyen, Martin Horn, Michael Lohse, Jae Ho Cho-Giorgio Mancini.