呆玲．玲散心事

SOME nations are faring better than others at the 2006 Philippines World Pool Championship as play continues through day three at the PICC in Manila.

Philippines, the biggest single entrant with 21 contestants in the starting line-up of 128 players have suffered mixed fortunes. Betting favourite Efren Reyes is through as is Lee Van Corteza, whose two wins from two are good enough to claim a top two spot in Group 9.

Resurgent veteran Rodolfo Luat is sitting pretty with a similar record and Ramil Gallego will sweat it out watching this evening’s final Group 32 clash between Tepwin Arrunath (Thailand) and Robb Saez of the USA. A big win for the Thai should see him home but any other result favours the Pinoy, while Jeff De Luna (pictured right) looked impressive during his triumph over England's Kevin Uzzell.

However, seasoned campaigner Leonardo Andam is out following defeats to Ralf Souquet and Chang Jung-ling with WPC novices Roland Garcia and Jerome Pena as well as the fancied Antonio Lining also eliminated.

The big guns from Germany are not disappointing. Ralf Souquet is through with a perfect three from three record and as is 2003 World Champion Thorsten Hohmann following wins over Andy Worthington and Edwin Montal in Group 3.

Thomas Engert, the European No.1, looks on fire in Group 9 and his match against the also-qualified Lee Van Corteza will be for Group supremacy only. Veteran Michael Schmidt is also through with a 100 per cent record after two matches.

By contrast, the Dutch contingent is having a woeful time with the ‘Big Three’ of Lely, Feijen and van den Berg proving a big disappointment. Lely and Feijen are already out. Lely lost all three Group 25 matches to wallow at the foot of the table and Feijen will join him on the early plane home as defeats to Michael Schmidt and Ryu Seong-woo have sealed his fate.

Nick van den Berg has played just one game but that was an astounding 7-8 defeat to Qatar's game Ahmed Al Sada who played a pressure cross table bank on the 9 ball for the win. Van den Berg stormed back with an 8-5 win over Sandor Tot to keep his hopes alive.

The players from Chinese Taipei, as usual are looking good with Wu, Yang and Chao on top form and a host of other players following closely behind.

我的重點是這段是這段：來自中華台北的選手，我們比較熟知的有吳珈慶（去年的冠軍嘛，了不起？= =）、楊清順、和趙豐邦這些站在接近高峰的頂尖選手。

Finally, there are mixed fortunes for Team USA. Jeremy Jones and Johnny Archer are both 2-0 whilst a misbehaving Strickland needs to win his last to survive the cut. Charlie Williams and Cory Deuel are both comfortably over the line while Rodney Morris, a semi-finalist in 2005, is already out of the 2006 competition.