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Roberto
Gomez’s biggest feat of his career wasn’t even enough to
satisfy him. That’s because Gomez could only come up
second.
Gomez’s
amazing run in the World Pool Championships was two
racks short from being punctuated with a title. Instead,
the 29-year-old fumbled on a couple of critical shots,
allowing Daryl Peach to string five racks, win, 17-15,
and capture the biggest prize in 9-ball of pool.
Gomez
appeared on the brink of becoming the fourth Filipino to
scale the Mount Olympus of pool, but with a chance at
reaching hill (16 racks), Gomez’s nerves unraveled. He
committed a foul attempting a jump shot at the 2-ball.
Peach took advantage, shook off cold sweat and strung
five victories to become the first European to cop the
trophy in four years.
NOTHING is sweeter for
Daryl Peach that kissing the champion’s trophy. But for
Roberto Gomez, the loss was worth an experience in his
chosen craft. -- NONOY
LACZA
Gomez
actually had a chance to derail Peach in the 31st rack.
But with the score tied at 15, Gomez flubbed an easy
shot at the 5-ball and then the money ball that would
have pushed him ahead.
“First
time ko lang makarating nang ganito kalayo. Hindi ko
nakayanan ’yung pressure, nawala ’yung focus
ko,” Gomez said. “Sayang, gustong-gusto kong
manalo hindi lang para sa sarili ko kundi para sa bayan.”
Gomez
settled for $40,000 (P1.76 million) in the match that
lasted nearly five hours. Peach took home the
championship purse worth $100,000 (P4.4 million).
“I’m so
depressed,” Gomez added. “I came this far only to fall
short in achieving my dream.”
With his
blistering run through the Worlds, Gomez has nothing to
feel embarrassed about.
He
became the first wild-card to reach the finals after
making it to the tournament only on October 29 or five
days before the main competition unfurled. To make it to
the main draw, Gomez needed to beat 59 others in one of
the qualifiers for the WPC.
He
opened the tournament by trouncing current top
moneymaker Niels Feijen of the Netherlands (9-6) and
India’s No. 1 Darminder Singh Lilly (9-4) to emerge the
second seed in Group 16.
Then
Gomez, 29, stepped on the gas in the knockout stage,
slaying big names convincingly.
He
demolished Alex Lely of the Netherlands in the first
round (10-1), 2000 champion Chao Fong-pang of
Chinese-Taipei (10-2) in the next and Feijen again in
the Last 16 (11-0).
He
defeated Kuo Po Cheng of Chinese-Taipei (11-4) in the
quarterfinals, then disposed of Karl Boyes of
England
(11-4) in the semifinals.
Overall,
Gomez came into the finals having surrendered only 21
racks, while scoring 71.
Though
more experienced, Peach came into the match an underdog,
having been through a number of squeakers.
Like his
predecessor, Peach, who made it to tournament after
winning this year’s Euro Tour German Open, lost badly in
his debut match, a 9-1 manhandling at the hands of
Slovenian Matjaz Erculj. He won two straight matches
including one against Filipino Rodolfo Luat (9-3) to
advance into the knockout stage.
Peach
drew 2006 champion Ronnie Alcano and came up with a 10-6
victory that eliminated Alcano and shocked the hometown
crowd. He followed it up with victories over Taiwanese
Lee Kun-fang (10-7) in the second round and German
Harald Stolka (11-5) in the Last 16.
Peach
slew his second high-profile Filipino opponent,
dispatching Francisco “Django” Bustamante, 10-9, in a
controversial match that saw officials call a foul on
Bustamante’s 3-9 combination. Peach advanced to meet
Vilmos Foldes of
Hungary
in the semifinals where the Englishman won, 11-2.
“This is
a dream come true for me, I’ve been chasing this my
whole life,” said Peach, a 35-year-old from
Blackpool,
England
who never got past the Last 64 in his eight previous
tries.
The
protagonists struggled to get their game going with the
organizers setting up a new table.
Gomez
won the lag but missed a relatively tough-angled shot of
the brown-7 to the bottom left corner to surrender the
opening rack to Peach, who likewise ran out the second
frame to take a 2-0 lead.
Peach
missed a shot of the blue-2 on the third rack to give
the table back to Gomez, who cleaned it up to score his
first point.
Gomez
also won the fourth frame but not after engaging Peach
in an exchange of uncharacteristic misses.
They
split the next two, and the seventh rack saw Gomez
missing an easy shot of the 2-ball, allowing Peach to
clean it up for a 4-3 lead.
Peach
made a 5-0 run to pad his advantage to 8-3, before
scratching on his break at the 12th rack that allowed
Gomez to return to the table and clean it up as well and
so were the next five frames for his first taste of the
lead at 9-8.
But
Gomez scratched on his break at the 18th rack giving
Peach another chance, which he readily took advantage of
to pocket three straight racks and regain the upper
hand, 11-9.
Peach
maintained the two-rack lead after the next two frames
until Gomez, this time, got the better end of an
uncharacteristic exchange of errors—mostly unforced—to
put himself up front, 14-12. Gomez then ran out the next
rack to make it 15-12.
But that
was the closest he could get to the peak of billiards’
Everest as after his first crack at reaching the hill
went kaput by committing a foul while trying for a jump
shot of the blue-2 on the safety-marred 28th rack, Peach
pocketed the next five frames to steal the thunder and
then the title.
Not that
Gomez did not have a chance—he missed an easy shot of
the orange-5 and, most importantly, the money-ball on
the 31st rack that would have put him on the hill.
From the
original 15 bets—the most by a country in the
tournament, the Philippines managed to send 13 of them
into the “win or go home” phase with only Luat and
Antonio Lining perishing in the Group Play.
But the
host country suffered a huge meltdown right after it
with eight of them -- Alcano, Efren “Bata” Reyes,
Leonardo Andam, Lee Van Corteza, Dennis Orcollo, Antonio
Gabica, Marlon Manalo and Ramil Gallego falling by the
wayside in the Last 64.
Jeff de
Luna then bowed out in the next round to leave the
Filipinos with only four to cheer and hope for. It was
further reduced to three when Francisco “Django”
Bustamante and Alex Pagulayan unfortunately drew each
other in the Last 16 with the former coming up the
victor.
But
Django, who is regarded as the best cue artist who has
not won the WPC tiara, saw his best chance of winning it
since his runner-up finish in 2002 came to a
disappointing halt with that controversial loss to
Peach.
Joven
Bustamante, Django’s distant nephew, also saw his
Cinderella stopped in the quarterfinals as he succumbed
to the 25-year-old Boyes, 11-8.
That
left Gomez to carry the cudgels representing the hopes
of an entire nation to the sport many of its people view
as a way out of poverty.
He
failed, and the
Philippines
remained tied with Germany and the United States for the
most number of WPC champions at three with Reyes (1999),
Pagulayan (2004) and Alcano. The Germans have three
titlists in Ralf Souquet (1996), Oliver Ortmann (1995)
and Thorsten Hohmann (2003), while the Americans have
Earl Strickland (1990, 1991, and 2002) and Johnny Archer
(1992 and 1997), and Nick Varner (1999 in a non-Matchroom
organized event).
Varner
is the only titleholder who did not participate in this
year’s edition.
Other
champions in this most prestigious 9-Ball tournament in
the planet were Chinese-Taipei’s Chao Fong-pang (1993
and 2000) and Wu Chia-ching (2005), Japan’s Takeshi
Okumura (1994) and Kunihiko Takahashi (1998), and
Finland’s Mika Immonen (2001). |
