Lithuania’s Pijus Labutis landed his maiden ranking title on the World Nineball Tour at the weekend, defeating Casper Matikainen 11-7 to win the Mezz Estonia Open at the Hill-Hill Billiard Club in Tallinn.
Having reached two ranking event finals last year at the Super Billiards Expo and the Derby City Classic, top seed Labutis sealed a first of a many successes and pocketed the $5,000 top prize in the Estonian capital.
Following a hill-hill opening round defeat at the hands of Finland’s Matikainen, which he later exacted revenge upon, European Open semi-finalist Labutis dropped only seven racks in five matches on his way to the quarter-finals.
There, the world number 13 swept aside Poland’s Wiktor Zielinski in an 11-5 victory, before reaching a third ranking event final with a hard-fought 11-9 win over Estonia’s own Denis Grabe.
Matikainen, meanwhile, reached his maiden WNT ranking final with an impressive 11-6 win over Poland’s Daniel Maciol, having also beaten the likes of Mark Magi and Labutis during his campaign.
New Zealand’s Sullivan Clark compiled five break and runs in a seismic win over Niels Feijen to make his second WNT ranking quarter-final, while Estonia’s Rafig Adigazalov reached the last eight for the first time.
The next ranking tournament on the World Nineball Tour calendar is the Mezz Bucharest Open from June 3-8 as Mickey Krause defends his title.
