Dimitris Loukatos dethroned defending champion Fedor Gorst on his way to the Peri 9-Ball Open quarter-finals at the Peri Pool Arena in Da Nang, Vietnam as eight players remain ahead of finals day.
Loukatos produced five break and runs during his emphatic 9-4 victory over the world number one in the last 64, and capitalised on the uncharacteristic errors that resulted in Gorst’s title defence being halted.
Greece’s Loukatos, a UK Open Championship quarter-finalist last year, followed that seismic scalp with a 9-6 win over Chang Yu-Lung, before battling his way through a hill-hill epic against Jefrey Roda to book his place in the quarter-finals.
The former Germany Open champion will now face Luong Duc Thien, who thrashed Baseth Mocaibat 9-1 in the last 16 and is one of two Vietnamese players in the quarter-finals.
Nguyen Hoang Tuan defeated both Jeffrey Ignacio and Raymund Faraon on Thursday to keep his hopes of home glory alive, and he will now encounter European Open champion Mickey Krause, who came through a deciding rack to deny Do The Kien.
Hong Kong teenager Fu Huan overcame both Mario He and Sanjin Pehlivanovic, although his run was scuppered by Aleksa Pecelj, with the Serbian meeting Lithuania’s two-time ranking event runner-up in Pijus Labutis.
Former world number one Francisco Sanchez Ruiz swept aside Duong Quoc Hoang in the last 64, much to the disappointment of a huge crowd of Vietnamese fans, before denying Thorsten Hohmann 9-8 and dismantling Robbie Capito 9-2.
Sanchez Ruiz will face an unheralded Filipino youngster in Paolo Gallito in the quarter-finals, with the 25-year-old having beaten Ramazan Akdag, Moritz Neuhausen and James Aranas and made a real name for himself in Da Nang.
Shane van Boening was convincingly beaten in the last 32 at the hands of Aranas, while Carlo Biado and Aloysius Yapp exited at the same stage following losses against Robbie Capito and Baseth Mocaibat.
The Peri Open reaches its conclusion on Friday as the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all played out, with the eventual champion receiving the $25,000 top prize.
