BURSA - The leading roles were for Eddy Leppens and Sung-Won Choi with averages well over two. And two Turkish outside favourits are in the main draw of the Bursa World Cup. Turkay Orak and Tarik Yaviz, in the tournament from the very first day, shared among twelve group winners on the final day. It was doomsday for a few stars of the previous rounds and the door was closed cruelly for former top twelve players like Jérémy Bury and Jean Paul de Bruijn.
Eddy Leppens and Sung-Won Choi led the ranking. The Belgian with glorious victories over Basegmez (40-6 in 15) and Ngo (40-31 in 20), the Korean, dethroned in Bordeaux as the world champion last year, with victories over Therese Klompenhouwer (40-19 in 23) and Murat Tüzül (40-20 in 13).
Turgay Orak showed up with a thunderous performance in a group with Gokhan Salman and Adnan Yüksel. Therefor he made it to the bowl for the draw after four days and eight match wins. The same happened to Tarik Yavuz, who sacrificed amongst others the Vietnamese Anh Vu Duong. Another revelation in the preliminaries, Hamit Akkaya, who suffers a serious kidney disease, was outplayed on the final day by an unlucky 40-39 against Lütfi Cenet and 40-36 against Jean Paul de Bruijn.
The young Korean Jung Ju Shin was the victim of a tough draw, in which he was linked to Jung Han Heo and Carlos Crespo. Emrullah Basegmez was led to the slaughter by Eddy Leppens in an embarrassing loss, 40-6 and Ruben Legazpi, the usually feared Spaniard, almost missed the draw, but slipped through as the third reserve player. Jérémy Bury was quickly sent home by two losses.
The twelve group winners (five Turks, three Koreans, two Vietnamese, one Belgian and one Greek) for the main tournament were Eddy Leppens (2.284), Sung-Won Choi (2.222), Jung Han Heo and Nikos Polychronopoulos (1.818), Quyet Chien Tran (1.777), Jae Guen Kim (1.702), Turgay Orak (1.538), Tarik Yavuz (1.481), Quoc Nguyen Nguyen (1.454), Lütfi Cenet (1.250), Ahmet Bayatli (1.176) and Hakan Incekara (two match points, 1.697) .
The top three runners-up for the main tournament: Ngo Dinh Nai (1.880), Arnim Kahofer (1.695) and Carlos Crespo (1.627).
The result of the main draw:
12.00 (Turkish time):
Blomdahl-Orkat
Cho-Sayginer
Caudron-Coklu
Zanetti-Bayatli
14.00:
Choi-Incekara
Tasdemir-Kahofer
Heo-Nguyen
Merckx-Jae Guen Kim
16.00:
Jaspers-Cenet
Hwang-Ngo
Forthomme-Tran
Leppens-Nady
18.00:
Kang-Yavuz
Polychronopoulos-HaengJik Kim
Sidhom-Crespo
Sánchez-Piedrabuena
UMB.