Polish youngster Szymon Kural pulled off an incredible victory over Sanjin Pehlivanovic at the UK Open, while his fellow teenagers Kledio Kaci and Sam Henderson also advanced to the winners qualification round in Telford.
Kural, a semi-finalist at last year’s Qatar Open, emphatically overcame world number 19 Pehlivanovic in a 9-1 victory to arrange a meeting with Japan’s Masato Yoshioka to qualify for the single elimination phase.
Pehlivanovic was the second-highest ranked player to be banished onto the one-loss side, with world number 14 Max Lechner having endured defeat at the hands of Antonis Brabin of Cyprus on the opening day.
Kaci, the 18-year-old younger brother of the defending champion, followed a comfortable 9-1 first round win with an impressive 9-5 victory over Denis Grabe, while 17-year-old Henderson from Iowa defeated both Diogo Soares and Mohammad Soufi.
Elsewhere, Bucharest Open champion Konrad Juszczyszyn endured an early departure following losses at the hands of Karl Boyes and World Pool Championship runner-up Soufi, while Roland Garcia was also amongst the early casualties.
Boyes followed his Scottish Open victories over Jonas Souto Comino and Albin Ouschan with a hard-fought win over the Pole, and kept his hopes alive on the one-loss side despite a subsequent 9-2 defeat against Indonesia’s Alvin Anggito.
His fellow ex-professional turned commentator Jeremy Jones was less fortunate, suffering a narrow hill-hill loss against Babken Melkonyan in his opener before his campaign ultimately came to an end following an 8-5 defeat to Estonian youngster Karl Gnadeberg.
Defending champion Kaci reached round three unscathed but the Albanian needed to come through a deciding rack epic against Jose Alberto Delgado, receiving a stroke of luck after miscuing the nine ball to win the match without the need of a final rack.
US Open champion Ko Ping-Chung and Wiktor Zielinski were both made to work for their safe passage through, winning 9-7 against Mikael Oegaard and Phil Burford respectively, while the likes of Francisco Sanchez Ruiz, Fedor Gorst and Joshua Filler advanced with relative ease.
Darren Appleton endured defeat in his opening match against Germany’s Niklas Dohr, bouncing back with victories over Riku Rompannen and Hsieh Chia-Chen. Finnish teenager Rompannen went two-and-out twelve months after reaching the last 16.
Vietnam’s Bui Truong An avenged his Scottish Open defeat to Ralf Souquet with a 9-8 win over the legendary German, while Besar Spahiu, Abdullah Al-Youssef, Dimitri Jungo, Jan van Lierop, Marc Bijsterbosch, Georgi Georgiev, Lu Hui-Chan and Masato Yoshioka also sealed hill-hill wins to reach the winners qualification round.
The last 64 will be confirmed following Thursday’s action at the Telford International Centre, with the stand-out winners qualification matches including Gary Wilson vs David Alcaide, Johann Chua vs Ko Pin-Yi and Pijus Labutis vs James Aranas.
