mbvl said:
Burgman v. Blomdahl live starting now.
Mark
Some notes on the tournament....
St. Wendel hosted the WC3C for the second time in three years. The normal rotation would have been to have it in Asia (Tokyo) which would have been appropriate with the defending champion being Ryuuji Umeda, but after the Asian confederation declined the hosting, St. Wendel stepped in.
Sankt Wendel is a medium-sized town in the southwest part of Germany, near France. Getting there is easy: you fly to Frankfurt, get on the train in the airport and get off the train about 300 meters from the town events hall where the tournament is held. Hotels and meals are quite affordable.
Historians of the medieval church may recall St. Wendel as the 12th-century monk who taught that garments should not have pockets because they were the tools of thieves and grafters. Of course this conflicted with the practices of the hierarchy, and he was stoned to death with round rocks.
Umeda, the defending champ, failed to get out of his qualification group in spite of having the best average in it. Frederic Caudron also failed to get out of the qualifications. A five-set loss to Sameh Sidhom, the Egyptian junior player, put him into a three-way tie on match points, and the lost-set count got him by one with Dion Nelin advancing.
There were several very interesting matches. Torbjorn Blomdahl was behind Eddie Merckx 12-4 in their final set and came back to win it. Daniel Sanchez flew by an uncharacteristically slow Dick Jaspers 3-0 with a 2.250 average. In the semifinals, Blomdahl swept Peter de Backer 3-0, while Jeremy Bury and Marco Zanetti were locked in a real struggle with a total of 135 points scored. The final set was 15-13 Zanetti in 4 (3) innings.
The finals were very close with another 135-point match, and again the deciding set was 15-13 with Zanetti the winner. Surprisingly, both players knocked the first object ball onto the floor once during the match. For Zanetti, it was a sweet victory with his new baby and wife in the audience.
Unheralded Kouji Funaki from Japan took high grand average honors with 1.891, while Jaspers had the high run with 14. Sanchez had the best single average with a 2.409 in the qualification phase.
Full details are available at
www.umb.org -- click on Calendar & Results.
