NEW YORK—The finals today will create pool history in one fashion or another.
If Lee Van Corteza wins, he will become not only the first Filipino World 14.1 champion, but also the first Asian to do so.
His Filipino compatriots Efren Reyes lost in the finals to USA’s John Schmidt, while Francisco Bustamante lost to Netherland’s Niels Feijen.
If Thorsten Hohmann wins, he will further solidify his position in pool history as he will become tied for the 3rd All-Time greatest straight pool player with Irving Crane.
More fascinating, he will be only within two wins away from tying Willie Mosconi and five wins away from tying Ralph Greenleaf at 10 wins. At 38 years old, it seems very feasible
Day 6 of the World 14.1 showed the world once more why Germany’s Hohmann is the King of straight pool.
In his quarter-finals match versus reigning champion Mika Immonen of Finland, he was faced with a massive deficit and pressure. Mika was within 1 rack of entering his second straight World 14.1 semi-finals at 184 balls, while Hohmann had 88 balls.
After a bad safety by Immonen, Hohmann got to the table and never left. 112 ball run and out to advance to Hohmann’s 6th ever World 14.1 semi-finals. Once he got there, waiting for him was 2014 World 14.1 Champion Darren Appleton of England, who was playing superb. But Appleton played well below his speed while Hohmann kept steady to a 200-87 win to goto the finals.
“One bad safe and he made me pay dearly. Good shooting Thorsten. Damn you!” wrote Immonen on his Facebook afterwards.
“I played garbage,” wrote Appleton on his social media.
On the other side of the chart, Filipino monster Corteza ran over Max Eberle 200-44, who had a magnificent tournament going undefeated in 8 matches. and then had a struggle against Scotland’s Jonni Fulcher in a close 200-145 ball win where Corteza actually missed a routine shot in the final rack but the ball reversed banked back and fluked in to the dismay of Fulcher who had fought hard to stay in the match.
“I was gutted when he fluked the 7-ball in”, said Fulcher.
But overall he was happy with his performance as he had finished 5th in previous events but this time had made the semi-finals.
“That Corteza plays so smooth he makes silk look rough,” complimented Danny Harriman, who finished 5th this year.