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Competition Favourite Reyes Beaten!
FLORIDA-BASED former Englishman Tony Crosby caused a huge shock on the opening day of the 2006 Philippines World Pool Championship as he edged out national hero Efren Reyes in an 8-7 thriller at the PICC in
Manila.
In front of a highly enthusiastic 600-strong crowd, both players had chances to win it before Reyes missed a simple 9-ball to effectively hand the match to
Crosby.
“I was so happy when I drew Efren as I’ve never played him before and always wanted to play him,” said
Crosby.
“Win or lose I’d have been happy to have been there. But before the match I thought I’d win as I’d been playing well and I know I can beat anyone. I’d beaten Strickland, Hohmann, Sambajon so I knew I could mix it with the best.”
It was all Crosby for the majority of the match as 32 year-old
Crosby
built up a handy 7-4 lead against an off-form ‘Bata’.
At 7-4 down Reyes missed a simple black into the bottom left pocket leaving
Crosby
the 8 and 9 for a big upset. The American though missed a tight cut into the middle pocket and Reyes wrapped up the rack to take it to 5-7.
Crosby
though, pulled off a top drawer shot in the next to clip the 1-ball in rail first and he then tied up Reyes in a tight snooker. Reyes escaped and
Crosby
lost the initiative as he left himself a hard shot on the blue 2. From there, the Filipino legend cleared to reduce the deficit to a single rack.
Reyes broke and ran the next to take the match to hill-hill but there was more drama in the final rack as nerves got the better of
Crosby
. He missed an orange 5 ball by inches and that left centre stage for Reyes to run out for victory in front of his adoring faithful but he missed the case 9-ball as the capacity crowd gasped in unison.
The 9-ball trundled toward the centre pocket leaving Tony Crosby the simplest of shots for the shock of the tournament so far.
He added: “I played good at the start but at 7-4 up I missed that 8 ball. Normally I make that but with the TV lights the cloth was a little slicker. I then missed that 4 ball by miles but that was nerves and pressure, said
Crosby
afterwards.
“When Efren was running out to win I felt a little embarrassed as I played a good match and only made a couple of bad shots.
The people behind me were saying ‘well done, unlucky’ and to be honest I was thinking the same thing!
“When he missed the 9 though I was just praying that it was going to be easy and it turned out it was.
This is by far the best place I’ve ever played a tournament
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