Moritz Neuhausen secured a sensational maiden World Nineball Tour ranking title, emphatically beating Taiwanese veteran Chang Yu-Lung 13-6 to become the Connecticut Open champion in West Haven.
A week on from missing a tournament-winning nine ball at the Raxx MVP Tour Open and gifting the title to Carlo Biado, it was redemption for the German teenager as he snapped off the $15,000 top prize and one of the biggest titles of his young career.
In comparable fashion to his previous campaign, former junior world champion Neuhausen was commanding and irresistible throughout the tournament but this time managed to hold his nerve and used last week’s negative into a positive to prevail.
Neuhausen quickly found himself 4-2 behind against the former US Open semi-finalist in the title decider, although a scratch off from the break from Chang allowed him back to the table and he capitalised before break and running to restore parity at four apiece.
Chang’s time at the table became limited in the proceeding racks and Neuhausen won back-to-back racks to lead 6-4, before putting together three consecutive break and runs to extend that advantage to 9-4.
His opponent did manage to stop the rot following a difficult jump shot on the two ball, with Chang reducing the deficit to 9-6, only for Neuhausen to reel off the remaining four racks to claim an elusive accolade.
Beforehand, Neuhausen comfortable defeated five-time US Open champion Shane van Boening 10-5 in the semi-finals in one of the biggest victories of his career, having already brushed aside Ko Ping-Chung in the quarter-finals.
The 19-year-old from Bonn also dispatched Vietnam’s Do The Kien 10-3, put together a seven-pack in a 9-0 whitewash of David Alcaide and beat both Greece’s Nicolas Malai and New Zealand’s Sullivan Clark.
Chang, meanwhile, rolled back the years as he clinched $8,000. The Taiwanese ace defeated both Mario He and Anton Raga in convincing style, having battled his way through a hill-hill thriller against Daniel Guttenberger earlier in the tournament.
It was a tournament held at Jayson Shaw’s pool room, US 1 Billiards in West Haven, and featured 64 players as well as more than $50,000 in prize money, with Shaw eventually exiting in the last 16 at the hands of Raga.
