By REYNALD MAGALLON
The Sharks International 9-ball competition has so far lived up to its goal of giving Filipino billiard players an avenue to showcase their talents and help bring the sport back to its glory days.
The first international world ranking tournament held in the country in 11 years, the Sharks 9-ball saw 128 players – 64 Matchroom Pool seeded foreigners and 64 Filipino pool players battle it out for the lion’s share of the P1,650,000 with three relatively unknown Filipino players advancing to the semifinals.
And one of them advanced to the finals in Michael Feliciano.
Feliciano even arranged a title clash with Taiwanese Kong Ping Chung with a 15-11 win over Oliver Villafuerte before a jampacked crowd at the Sharks Billiard League Great White Arena in Tomas Morato, Quezon City.
Chung, on the other hand, hacked out a 15-7 win over Patrick Gonzales.
Feliciano and Chung were battling for the title at presstime.
The three Filipinos bested their more celebrated counterparts in the likes of Filipino stars Carlo Biado, Johann Chua, James Aranas and legends Dennis Orcollo and Django Bustamante.
The event also featured world class pool players in Japanese Naoyuki Oi, Singaporean star Alloysius Yap and 2019 nine-ball Russian world champion Fedor Gorst.
The results of the games were a testament to Sharks’ beliefs that the country has an abundance of pool talents only needing to be discovered if given enough platform and exposure.
“Our local talents now are more inspired, they are feeling very hopeful for their careers in the sport. This is the main vision of Sharks to provide that sort of platform for our local talents,” said Sharks Billiard League head of marketing Mark Orendain.
