Fedor Gorst needed nearly the maximum amount of racks possible to play on Thursday to advance to the Last 16 in the 2024 World Pool Championship in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. One of the pre-tournament favorites, Gorst has struggled all week but found ways to survive.
The Russian-born cueist, who now resides in the United States, trailed Ameer Ali, 7-1, at one point in the Last 64. He came back to edge past the Iraqi player, 11-9. Then, Gorst went hill-hill with Chang Yu-Lung, a former World Cup of Pool winner.
Gorst faces Brit Chris Melling in the Last 16 on Friday. Many others in the top-10 of the world nineball rankings didn’t pull through the start of the single elimination stage. Reigning world champion and world number one Francisco Sanchez Ruiz was among the casualties, exiting at the hands of Denmark’s Mickey Krause.
So too were world number four Ko Ping Chung and world number five Jayson Shaw. US Open winner Ko fell 11-4 to Marc Bijsterbosch in the Last 32, while Shaw dropped out with an 11-8 defeat to David Alcaide. Both are missing this particular event from otherwise packed trophy cabinets.
Young Singaporean Aloysius Yapp will also need to wait to add a world championship to his resume. Last year’s runner-up, Mohammad Soufi, rolled past Yapp, 11-5, in the Last 64. Soufi continued his run into the Last 16 with a 11-7 victory against Bader Al-Awadhi.
World number three Shane Van Boening had no such trouble. He brushed past Wu Kun Lin, 11-9, then shrugged off a comeback charge from Alex Kazakis, 11-7.
Thursday ended with plenty of hill-hill drama in the Last 32. Anton Raga sent world number ten Mario He packing, 11-10. Melling squeaked by fellow Brit Elliott Sanderson with both reaching the hill. A little earlier, Johann Chua and Max Lechner played to a climactic finish with Chua triumphing by one rack.
Three Filipinos remain in the hunt for the $250,000 top prize. Jeffrey Ignacio joins Chua and Raga in the Last 16 on Friday. Ignacio, who won the Indonesia International Open earlier this year, will play Alcaide, whereas Chua faces Soufi, and Raga earned the toughest matchup of the trio, having to play 2018 champion and the highest Fargo-rated player in the world, Joshua Filler.
Filler faced trouble on Thursday in the Last 64. He lagged behind Fitim Haradinaj, 9-4, to start, but battled back to win, 11-9. Then, he crushed American Oscar Dominguez, 11-1.
The two relative underdogs remaining are Joao Grilo and Mickey Krause, though both have made deep runs at WNT events earlier in 2024. Grilo reached the quarter-finals of the FSR Nineball Open in March, and Krause lost in the Last 16 at the UK Open about a month ago.
Grilo plays young Polish phenom Wiktor Zielinski on Friday, while Krause faces China’s Dang Jinhu, the reigning Spanish Open champion.
