3-Cushion
VEGHEL - The World Cup in Veghel, from 7 to 13 November 2021, has already seen a rush of registrations in the first six hours after the opening. Many billiard players, Dutch and from many faraway countries, are relieved that finally another big international tournament is coming up and confirmed to the UMB calendar. This afternoon, Monday, the registration opened at a little over 12.00 o'clock after a short disruption. Six hours later, 98 players were already on the reserve list, which will be updated again tonight (Monday evening).
The last of three wildcards, following Therese Klompenhouwer and Sam van Etten for the Netherlands, goes at the request of the UMB to 42-year-old Colombian Pedro Gonzalez, the player who in 2018 and 2019 twice in a row became Pan American champion in Lima and Mexico City. Myung-Woo Cho, the young, very talented Korean who is on military service in his country, is missing from the top fourteen seeded players. He will be replaced by young Vietnamese Duc Anh Chien Nguyen, number two at the last World Three-cushion Championship in Randers after losing the final against Torbjörn Blomdahl.
The fourteen seeded players are Jaspers, Zanetti, Merckx, Tasdemir, Blomdahl, Sánchez, Tran, Kim (HaengJik), Sidhom, Sayginer, Coklu, Horn, Bury and Nguyen.
After the seeded players and the three wildcard holders, the places from 16 to 96 on the list of participants are reserved for players in the top 98 of the world rankings. Over thirty of them have already entered the competition, including:
For Greece: Nikos Polychronopoulos, Kostas Kokkoris
For Korea: Sung-won Choi, Jun Tae Kim
For Turkey: Lütfi Cenet, Can Capak, Gökhan Salman, Ahmet Alp, Tolgahan Kiraz
For Belgium: Roland Forthomme, Peter Ceulemans, Jef Philipoom
For Denmark: Dion Nelin, Jakob Haack Sörensen, Thomas Andersen
For Sweden: Michael Nilsson
For Spain: Antonio Montes
For the Netherlands: Barry van Beers
On the list of participants, places 130-149 are reserved for the rest of the Dutch players, who qualify for the invitation by participating in the Masters, from the continuous ranking list or as national champions in the Excellent class and the Dutch juniors championship.
The expectation is that not all reserved places will be filled and that between 25 and 40 reserve places still have a chance to participate.
The best known names, with position, on that reserve list were at 18.00 this Monday:
5 Maxime Panaia, 11 Gerhard Kostistansky, 38 Jose Maria Mas, 39 Herbert Thuer, 40 Francis Forton, 52 Jean Reverchon, 53 Bart Ceulemans, 55 Robinson Morales, 56 and 57 Omer and Berkay Karakurt, 58 Serdar Bas, 63 Ronny Brants, 65 Gülsen Degener, 79 Steven van Acker, 82 and 83 Mario Mercader and Yvan Major and in the last ten Wesley de Jaeger, Henk Blauwblomme and Raymon Groot.
Peter Ceulemans is for the Belgian on the list, his young brother Bart is nr 53 on the reserve list
Vietnamese player Duc Anh Chien Nguyen replaces Korean Myung-Woo Cho in the list of seeded players