Some random observations from watching some of the matches towards the end.
1) Caudron is an absolute beast. If you get a chance check out the fourth point in the run of 7 with which he closed out Zanetti. Even thinking of shooting it that way is incredible, but the fact that he pulled it off is amazing. (for those not able to see it - it was an incredible draw shot - he drew it all the way round the table to a pretty small ball on the middle of the opposite short rail). It was such an amazing point that most people might overlook the firts point of that run, which was an incredible rail first shot. Even Zanetti tapped his chalk for that one
2) The Vietnamese guy, Nguyen, who made it to the semis is a bit of a character. His exuberance, in the company of steely eyed pros was a nice breathe of fresh air. There is a youtube video of him beating Sayginer in a close match in the 2105 Guri world cup event if you haven't seen him play. He has an interesting way of approaching a lot of his shots where he lays his cue along the shot line with his left hand (he is a lefty) and then with the cue still there gets down (his stance s very low and wide) into the shot. And he did it more frequently in his macth against Jaspers than in that old video.
3) The fans were more expressive than any recent world cup I've watched. Unusually, they would start cheering for points as soon as they saw that they were on line and kiss-free. The crowd noise was more like watching along putt on a golf course (where the crowd noise build up as the ball rolls towards the hole and then explodes when it goes in) than the normally staid watching of billiards, where the crowd usually politey claps, sometimes, AFTER the point is scored.
4) Jaspers had the misfortune of playing his worst match in the final. It allowed Caudron to take revenge for his earlier defeat in the finals of the Bursa event. The win put Caudron ahead of Blomdahl for the #1 ranking. Jasper's lackluster play made the final a little bit of an anticlimax compared to the 2 semi-finals.
5) So far this year the old guard is dominating the young guns n the World Cup, with Caudron, Jasers, and Merckx the winners of the first three. But a lot of the energy in the Billiards world seems to come from Korea and Viet Nam.
6) Dani Sanchez got eliminated in his first match by the amazing run of 22 and out by Polychronopoulos - and ironically had the high grand average for the event. The Greek's 22 was the high run of the event. So the high run and the high average both occurred in the same game - by different players. I wonder how often THAT has happened?
7) In the minutia category I noticed, for the first time, Jaspers, using a white plastic-looking little tube as a burnisher. The only one like that I've ever seen is the one that Caudron uses, which is FC-branded.
https://store.kozoom.com/uk/carom_billiards/the-caudron-tip-burnisher-tip-tool-caudron.html
I wonder if Jaspers was using a Caudron burnisher. LOL
Anyway, it was a great event with a very worthy champion. Watch Caudron's final run of 7 against Zanetti if you get a chance.
On to Porto!!
