By Erik Hjorleifson
The field is now down to 8 teams and most of the favourites have come through, the only heavy favorite to go down in defeat so far is Taiwan. Finland is among the teams making waves and has yet to drop a game; the team of Petri Makkonen and Mika Immonen have a good chemistry going again and will look to better their second place finish in 2012. Team China came out on fire in round two and toppled their opponents England B with a 7-0 score in a match that lasted about 30 minutes.
One of the most highly contested matches of the day was between Germany and Canada. Despite a few early errors by Canada they were able to stay close in the beginning splitting the first 4 games. Germany then took the lead at 5-2.
After a dry break in rack 8 the Canadians took advantage of a tied up table layout and won the game on 3 consecutive fouls. The next 3 games were all Canada as a couple of strong safes and a break and run put them on the hill at 6-5.
In the 12th game after gaining control of the rack, it was all there for the taking. The fateful error came when Pagulayan left Morra with a funny angle on the 8, no fault of his as he was just trying to get him close to the shot and caught a bad angle on it. The unfortunate result was that Morra missed an 8 that looked like it was impossible to miss.
To the untrained eye it would seem this way, but I was watching the match live and the problem was that if Morra pocketed the ball in the center of the pocket the cue ball would have drifted toward a frozen position on the side rail. The shot was too straight to cheat the pocket to the outside so he chose to try and cheat the pocket to the inside to hold the angle of draw.
He just barely caught the inside rail and because of the speed of the shot it rattled the pocket. Again, to the untrained eye it would seem that he just choked, but I can tell you that definitely wasn't the case. It was a real heart breaker that he didn't have more of a natural angle for position because the nine was wide open for the win. Of course as fate would have it Germany made a tough break and run for the hill-hill victory. In closing team Canada played well this year and will be hungry for revenge in the years to come.
In other matches, the interesting pairing of Shane Van Boening and Earl Strickland advanced after a close match with a talented Russian team. The last remaining English team of Darren Appleton and Karl Boyes had a strong match advancing with a 7-1 score line against Greece. Austria squeaked by Qatar after Qatar made a routine error that would have put them ahead 6-4. They also made a fairly easy safety error in the next game, however they will draw positives from this event as they had a great first round win against Taiwan.
Here are the quarterfinal match-ups for Saturday:
China v Austria
Philippines v Finland
Holland v Germany
England A v USA
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