Maximilian Lechner (AUT) shocked the current #1 player of the Euro-Tour, David Alcaide (ESP) today. He eliminated him in the round of the last 32 players of the Dynamic Billard Treviso Open with a 9:6 victory.
Lechner was more or less the underdog in this match. He came to the table with a lot of confidence. Already yesterday, he had lost his opening with 6:9 to Aleksa Pecelj (SRB). So he had to take the longest of all ways through the loser’s side. But he managed to book himself a seat in the single elimination round against Alcaide with victories over Michal Turkowski (POL) 9:1, Ruslan Chinakhov (RUS) 9:7, Konrad Juszczyszyn (POL) 9:3 and a thriller over Oliver Ortmann (GER) with 9:8. Having cleared all these heavyweights from the event, Lechner was ready for another attack. His opponent Alcaide took the „soft route“ to this match with victories over George Antonakis (GRE) 9:6, Stanimir Ruslan (BUL) 9:7 and Sergey Lutsker (RUS) 9:6 in the winner’s qualification round. Two different worlds collided in that match.
Left to right: N. Feijen, M. Lechner & F. Sanchez-Ruiz
The #1 ranked player who easily made it to the match against the hard working underdog. However, Lechner was on a mission in this match. It appeared that the Austrian was on fire against his high profile opponent. He quickly took a 4:1 lead over Alcaide which made the Spaniard take his time-out at such an early stage in the match. When he came back, things seemed to coma back to „normal“. Alcaide won the next two racks and the score was suddenly 4:3 for Lechner only. At that time, Lechner took his time-out. He came back to the table and had an unbelievable run in the match. He played rock solid and took four racks in a row to get on the hill with 8:3 over Alcaide. The #1 knew that this match was now a „do-or-die“ for him. And he accepted the challenge. He pulled back a few racks to get to 6:8. But then Lechner ended his dreams for another Euro-Tour victory in 2017 and won the rack and the match 9:6 over Alcaide. In the next round, the encounter of the last 16 players, Lechner will again be the underdog, playing against his famous teammate Albin Ouschan (AUT) who won his single elimination match 9:4 over surprise player Stefan Huber (AUT).
Other remarkable results from today include „The Terminator“ Niels Feijen (NED) winning his matches against Nick Ekonomopoulos (GRE) 9:4 and Mieszko Fortunski (POL) 9:3. Feijen, who just recently recovered from a serious elbow injury, came back as strong as usual and will play Wojciech Sroczynski (POL) in the next round. Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz (ESP) is also still alive in the Dynamic Billard Treviso Open. Today, two „dutchies“ were his victims of the day. First, he overcame Ivo Aarts (NED) 9:8, then he got the better of Marc Bijsterbosch (NED) with 9:4. Sanchez-Ruiz will face Mario He (AUT) in his next match tomorrow morning.
Since now the top two players of the Euro-Tour rankings, David Alcaide and Ralf Souquet (GER) are out of the Dynamic Billard Treviso Open, Feijen, Ouschan and Sanchez might get a chance to reach a pretty high position in the rankings at the year’s end.
Tomorrow, the Dynamic Billard Treviso Open will continue at 10:00 CET with matches from the last 16 players single elimination. The final match is scheduled for 18:00 CET.
Every day, one match from the events will be shown LIVE on the Facebook page of the EPBF for free. All Facebook users may check out the high standard of quality which is provided for all the events and see what the Kozoom members receive all the time. You can see all the matches live via www.kozoom.com who stream the whole event on 16 tables on the internet LIVE. The FB live matches are announced on the EPBF Facebook page every day. Results and schedules can be found at www.eurotouronline.com so why not come and check out all the LIVE action of the Dynamic Billard Treviso Open.
The event will be hosted by the European Governing Body for Pool, the European Pocket Billiard Federation (EPBF) and organized by International Billiard Promotion (IBP). For further information and reference please go to the federation website www.eurotouronline.com visit us on Facebook or check out our youtube channel for regular news clips or contact our press office [email protected].