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Big names cruised along at the 2011 World 9-Ball Championship as Ronnie Alcano, Antonio Linning, Daryl Peach, Niels Feijen all secured comfortable victories in the group stages at the Al Sadd Sports Club here yesterday.
Having already won the World 8-Ball and World 9-Ball crowns on separate occasions, Alcano has his sights set on the title to become the most successful Filipino player on the world circuit.
The world No.2, who is enjoying good run of form lately, did not waste too much time putting out the challenge from Eritrean Hamzah al-Saeed 9-5.
Later on Linning kept the Philippines flag high as the world No.3 got the better of Liu Cheng-Cheih from Chinese Taipei 9-4. Linning will meet another opponent from far-east in Japan's Tohru Kuribayashi after the latter overcame Germany's Oliver Ortmann 9-6.
Britain's former 9-ball champion Peach also advanced to the next round with a comfortable 9-5 victory over Singapore's Keng Kwang Chan. The Briton will now meet Saudi Arabia's Mohammad al-Hazmi for a place in the last 64 today.
In what turned out to be a major upset on the day, Hazmi upset Vietnam's world No.24 Nguyen Phuc Long 9-6.
Dutchman Feijen, who became the world 10-ball champion recently, scored a 9-4 victory over Japan's Tamoo Takano to set up a meeting with Germany's Sascha-Andrej Tege for a place in the last 64. Tege blanked Saudi Arabia's Badr al-Hamdan 9-0.
Meanwhile, Qatar's Mohanna Obaidly kept his hopes alive for a place in the last 64 from the losers' bracket. Obaidly, who had lost his opening match to Venezuelan Jalal Yousef on Saturday, came good yesterday to win 9-6 against Hong Kong player Andrew Kong. The highest ranked Qatari pool player at 141 is now a win away from the elimination round.
Britain's Mark Gray shrugged off his opening loss to Filipino master Efren Reyes as he pulled it together in another close contest. Gray had conceded the last three racks to lose the match 9-8 to Reyes after being in command early on. He was on the brink yesterday, trailing Hungary's Vilmos Foldes 7-2 in their match in the losers' bracket. But the Briton held his nerves to produce a flawless game, taking the next seven racks to win 9-7.
Poland's Radoslav Babica and Japanese Yukio Akakariyama had to use all their resources before coming home against Philippines' Raymund Faron and Qatar's Mohammed Al Bin Ali in the last racks respectively.