Favorites advance to A Mild third round

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Kuta, Bali

Several top-ranked players advanced to the third round of the main draw at the A Mild Billiard Bali International Open at Paradiso Bowling and Billiard Center here on Wednesday.

Among players with easy wins were world No. 3 Alex Pagulayan of Canada, world No. 5 Efren Reyes of the Philippines, world No. 7 Fransisco Bustamante of the Philippines, 13th-ranked Mika Immonen of Finland and world No. 32 Chao Fong-Pang of Taiwan.

Pagulayan, Reyes, Bustamante and Chao cruised through at the expense of the Indonesian players.

Pagulayan sent home Eddy "Dino" Hartono 7-5; Reyes defeated Ramli H. 7-3; and Bustamante edged out Jimmy J. 7-4; Chao won 7-2 against Teddy Sutansyah.

Immonen, meanwhile, beat Jason Ahmad of Australia 7-4.

Dino had to abandon his chase in the tournament after he somehow lost concentration while in the lead.

Ahead by 5-4, he missed the chance to pocket the second ball in frame 10.

"Afterwards, Pagulayan did not waste his chance to pull out some shots and seal the game," Dino said. "I had really motivated myself to beat him, but once again I failed."

Immonen conceded a slightly shaky performance early on to allow Ahmad to level the score at 4-4 before regrouping in the remaining frames.

"There was a pressure early for me to win the game, but later on I gained in composure and took the last three frames for a 7-4 victory," he said.

Other Indonesian contenders, Siaw Wieto and Muhammad Zulkifli, also failed to find winning form. Tournament champion in 2004, Siaw was beaten 4-7 by Vincent Goh T. Kiat of Singapore, while Zulkifli lost 3-7 to 1998 Asian Games champion Gandy Valle of the Philippines.

Siaw found tough opposition in Vincent and the matched leveled at 3-3 before the Indonesian champion the began to falter, making bad breaks and missing chances to pocket easy balls.

He could only take one more frame before losing out to the Filipino.

"I made too many bad breaks. That affected my confidence," he said."

Despite the defeat, under the double elimination play format, Siaw still had a chance of qualifying for the last 32 if he could win a match against another loser later on the day.