The Eurotour 9-ball event in Sankt Johann, Austria started today and it was Niels Feijen who dished out a heavy defeat to Hungarian Number 1, Balazs Miko, the Dutch Mosconi Cup player progressing into the second round with a 9-2 victory.

The match was determined by two things: Feijen’s strong performance and Miko’s mistakes. It can be stated altogether that Feijen deserved to win the match, also with that clear result. Feijen managed to get a better break shot on the table and benefitted from  this. When Miko broke the balls, usually no ball went in or the balls were clustered together. The safety battle that followed that situation  was usually won by Feijen.

In the third rack, Miko committed his first fatal mistake. He was almost winning the rack  when he overdrew the cue ball while pocketing the 8-ball. The cue ball scratched and instead of  1:2, the score was now 3:0 for Feijen. The next three consecutive racks went into Feijen’s  account. He ran out two of them ta take a 5:0 lead. In the 6th rack, Feijen made no ball on his  break and left an open table for Miko. The Hungarian approached the table and played until the 5- ball was the ball on. He ran out of position and missed the 5-ball, including another scratch of the  cue ball. What a catastrophe for Miko! He was only able to open his account and won the next rack to make the score 1:6. Then Feijen took his time out.

The next rack provided the spectators with a lot of safety play by both players. In the end, no wonder it was Feijen again to win the rack because he forced his opponent to make a mistake. Miko was able to snatch one more rack before Feijen closed the book on this match, taking the match with 9:2 and advancing in the  winner’s round. Miko needs to make his way through the loser’s side but he also has to improve his performance if he wants to make it to the single elimination stage.

For the British players it was a reasonably good morning with Mark Gray winning 9-1, Daryl Peach winning 9-1, Jonni Fulcher surviving to go through 9-8, Karl Boyes winning 9-2, Jasyon Shaw and Chris Melling both winning 9-3 and Phil Burford trailing 5-2 managed to turn it around to win 9-6. Just defending Champion Ricardo Jones left to play at 4:30pm today.