Aleksa Pecelj overcame his Yuma heartbreak in emphatic fashion, mounting another sensational comeback against Oliver Szolnoki to claim the inaugural Phoenix Open with a 13-9 triumph in the final.
A week after falling agonisingly short in the Arizona Open Pool Championship final to Estonia’s Denis Grabe, the 26-year-old returned to the Grand Canyon State with something to prove.
His road to glory was anything but straightforward after being relegated to the losers’ side following an early defeat to Lithuania’s Pijus Labutis.
Pecelj was pushed to the absolute brink in a nerve-shredding hill-hill thriller against Filipino starboy AJ Manas in the losers’ qualification round, but he survived the sudden-death test and never looked back.
He brushed aside Jesus Atencio and Harry Vergara before delivering two phenomenal wins against major champions Joshua Filler and Aloysius Yapp to set up a dramatic final with Oliver Szolnoki.
Szolnoki has been in the form of his life in Phoenix, blowing David Alcaide, Marco Teutscher, Jonas Souto, Chang Yu-Lung and world champion Carlo Biado out of the water in dominating fashion.
The Hungarian carried that white-hot momentum straight into the final. His excellent safety plays early in the match forced Pecelj to deploy the short stick, and he raced out to a commanding 5-0 lead.
Yet if the Serbian cueist has proven anything to the pool world, it is that he is never a quitter and thrives when backed against the wall, having battled back from huge deficits against Albert Januarta and Shane van Boening at the Arizona Open.
The Serbian responded by stringing together four consecutive racks on the spin, but a costly scratch handed momentum right back to Szolnoki, who capitalised with a clean 3–9 combination and a break-and-run to re-establish an 8-4 cushion.
Once again finding himself in a hole down 4-8, Pecelj revitalised at the right moment. He orchestrated an astonishing surge by winning nine of the final 10 racks to defeat Szolnoki 13–9 and add another famous comeback to his resume.
A powerful Pecelj display was highlighted by his incredible break efficiency, gifting him a lot of good looks after the break, something Szolnoki was not rewarded with.
The Phoenix Open title is a well-deserved reward for Pecelj, his first WNT ranking title since his breakthrough at the 2023 Visoko Open and $20,000 added to his Mosconi Cup ranking.
It is hard to write a better script than this for the master of escapology, repeatedly coming back from near-death situations across two gruelling weeks in the desert.
From the ruins of his Arizona Open final defeat, Pecelj rose from the same ashes like a phoenix itself to conquer the Phoenix Open.
Former semi-finalist Pecelj will now look to carry this stellar wave of momentum into the season’s crown jewel, as the US Open Pool Championship takes place from August 25-30 in Frisco, Texas.
