Japan Open is smaller less prestigious event than All Japan. All Japan was a major in previous decades and featuring many big names good prizemoney but in recent years, the field is much weaker with reduced prizemoney and is more a ranking event not a major. Even then Oi has not won All Japan.
Yes Oi is high in shortlist of those who have not won major yet.
If we consider majors as W9B, W8B,W10B, Matchroom major opens (US, UK etc) and exclude invitationals like World Cup of Pool, Big Foot and exclude team events like WCP. Then for the FR top 40 (excluding less active players like Liu Haitao, Mark Gray) , IMHO this is shortlist of those who have not won a major and are due to win one. (taking into account how long they have been playing and slogging in international 9B/10B events, not how likely they are to win one)
1st in line (not in order)
Naoyuki Oi
Skyler Woodward
Johann Chua
Mario He
Lee Van Corteza
Max Lechner
2nd in line (not in order)
Anton Raga
Aloysius Yapp
Wiktor Zielinski
Kun Lin Wu
Sanjin Pehlivanovic
Roland Garcia
Alex Kazakis
James Aranas
And just few days ago almost basically same field as 10-ball wc Las vegas open..
Not to mention he beat Biado in the finals.
Much better now since they went to a full third set until the score reaches 3-3 before there is a shootout. IMO they fixed the problem of playing shootout after each player wins one set. That was a horrible format.
True, but sets are still a bit frowned upon as well. Length of play was a question, but the matches have not been ridiculously long.
3-0 is not an insurmountable lead by any means. There were sets won after being down 3-0. How many I don't know. As far as the set scores go, the only comparison I have is in Tennis. A player can lose a match 6-0, 6-7, 6-7! The losing player has won 18 games and the winning player has won 14. It's all about who handles the pressure the best, and that's what you have in 6-6 matches that go to the Tiebreaker format.
18 10-balls were made on the break in the 23 Table 1 and Table 2 streamed matches, about 5% of the breaks.
True true, bigger leads have been squandered. Yet it might be of influence in shot choice or mentally.
I recall there were only 9 shoot-outs also….didnt seem so bad….but I’d still rather see ‘best of’ sets.
Thanks for the stat. I noticed the large frequency as well. With that particular rack (no template), the 10 ball had the tendency to drift toward one of the lower corner pockets. There were probably nearly that many 10 balls that were combo-ed in, which given typical rules would have resulted in early games.
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