Sanjt Johan, Austria was the destination for the latest Eurotour. I arrived coming off of the back of a 5th place finish in the world 9ball championships, and a respectable 9th place finish in the world 10ball championships. I knew I was playing well and confidence was high, so I was expecting good things here.
It didn't go as planned early on, in my 1st match vs Italy's Vitorio Defalco I didn't perform at all until I found myself 8-4 down!...And Vitorio was playing as good as I had seen him play , so I had to dig deep and make something happen! I DID! It was like I flicked a swith that said "perfect" on it, cos I played near my best for the last 5racks to come through a 9-8 winner.
My 2nd match was against another Italian, but this time I was determined to start the match better and I made light work of it with a 9-4 win.
The next match turned out to be very interesting, but only after the tournament was over!...(i will explain later)...
It was the winners side qualifying match vs Richard Jones (also a good friend). It's never easy playing friends, but on this occasion I was able to focus well on the table, and when Richard made a couple of mistakes early on in the match I capitalised well and played near perfect to comfortably win 9-3.
Next up was my last32 match vs the runner up from the last eurotour, Jayson Shaw.....this was my 3rd match of the day and I had my eye in....I played extremely well again and quickly found myself 7-0 up, we shared the next 4 racks which enabled me to finish the match a 9-2 winner!
So, on the Saturday mooring it was the last16 match, and the same thing happened to me that has happened 3 times this year at Eurotour events.....basically, I played great to this stage, but then really struggle in this match. The only thing I can put it down to is sleep, or lack of it....also, I have to mention on this occasion my opponent, Christian Riemering played very well too, and beat me 9-4.
But another disappointing finish to an event where I felt I was playing as good as anybody in the event, confident, and up for the job....it's very hard to put my finger on the reason why this has happened a few times this year.......but trust me, I will find the reason, I always do! Hahaha.
So, just to finish, I mentioned about the match with Richard Jones being a very interesting one.....well, Richard came through on the losers side to qualify after I had beaten him, and then he went on to win the event. It's not often you can say you beat the winner......it's usually "I lost to the winner" hehehe
But this has happened to me before in Switzerland eurotour a few years ago, where I beat Mark Gray in the very first round, and then he did the same, goning on to win the event!
I have a couple of weeks off now, so I'm gonna have a little rest from pool, then back on it practicing hard ready for GB9, and the next Eurotour.
