Albanian teenager Kledio Kaci stunned Joshua Filler in a hill-hill thriller to land his maiden World Nineball Tour ranking title at the Bucharest Open in Romania.
Having made the last 16 of the Spanish Open Championship during his initial outing on the World Nineball Tour two years ago and reached a major quarter-final since then, Kaci realised his potential by emerging victorious in the Romanian capital.
The 19-year-old sensation compiled five break and runs in a 9-8 victory in the title decider, racing into a 4-0 lead but needing to fend off a valiant comeback from Filler, who also ran out on five occasions in a high-quality final.
Beforehand, Kaci had beaten former runner-up Wiktor Zielinski 9-5 in the semi-finals, having also pulled off impressive wins over Serbia’s Aleksa Pecelj, Poland’s Hubert Lopotko and Italy’s Francesco Candela.
It wasn’t all plain-sailing for the young Albanian nonetheless as he needed to come through three matches on the one-loss side in double elimination following a third round defeat at the hands of Martin Forman.
Filler, meanwhile, emerged through three deciding rack affairs against Christos Papageorgiou, Marcus Chamat and Robbie Capito on his way to the final, although he was unable to win a third ranking title of the season.
Elsewhere, recent UK Open runner-up Jonas Souto Comino exited in the quarter-finals at the hands of Poland’s Zielinski, while Albania’s Ernesto Gjoni stunned Niels Feijen during a surprise run to the quarter-finals.
