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Team Asia completes fitting Efren tribute, denies Team Europe to win 1st-ever Reyes Cup

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Rappler.com 

MANILA, Philippines – After four grueling days of world-class pool action, Team Asia penned the final chapter in the inaugural Reyes Cup 9-ball tournament with a captivating 11-6 conquest of favored Team Europe, ending its Cinderella run just past the stroke of midnight on Saturday, October 19.

Against a team with three of the world’s top five players, the Asian delegation proved that rankings are not everything in the world of pool, as eventual MVP Aloysius Yapp of Singapore drove the final blow with a 5-1 rout of world No. 5 Francisco Sanchez Ruiz for the coveted 11th win in the race-to-11 tournament.

As the partisan Manila crowd at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium quietly grumbled through a singles onslaught of world No. 3 Jayson Shaw against Filipino veteran Carlo Biado and Vietnamese Duong Quoc Hoang, Yapp provided a welcome reprieve, taking a 2-1 lead with a gutsy 3-ball hit to sink the 9.

While Sanchez Ruiz contemplated on his crucial mistakes — a 7-ball miss on Rack 1 and a 3-ball foul on Rack 3 — Yapp continued to clean house, sweeping Rack 4 with a runout as the arena livened up anew with a cheering crescendo.

Having already lost momentum, Sanchez Ruiz blew his final chance after a Rack 5 break as he missed the 2-ball twice — the latter being a costly foul that gave Yapp control of the cue ball and with it, a license to plan out his winning route on the table for a sizeable 4-1 lead.

Blocking out the impending eruption of a celebratory, anxious crowd, Yapp focused on one last task at hand, expertly mapping out his final sequence before finally letting out a victorious scream as the tournament’s last 9-ball dropped out of sight and into the history books.

“I’m proud of my whole team. At the start of the week, I was definitely feeling really nervous. I made a lot of mistakes, but my teammates — every one of them — and all of the fans, too, and my family, they really supported me and they lifted up my spirits,” Yapp said in the post-tournament interview.

“This MVP is not for me. I feel like all my teammates are MVPs as well, even Efren. He’s the best coach you could ever ask for.”

Statement made to the world

True enough, Team Asia’s impressive run was by no means an Aloysius Yapp show, as Duong and Taiwanese star Ko Pin Yi put the squad on the cusp of history with a 5-3 takeover of Sanchez Ruiz and Mickey Krause for their 10th point in just the night’s second match.

Shaw, however, cranked up the aggression with nothing else to lose, as he dumped Biado and Duong down a pair of 4-0 holes in consecutive singles matches with unbridled speed and swagger, before finally sealing the deal with respective 5-3, 5-2 finishes for Team Europe’s fifth and sixth points.

Although he somewhat failed to follow up on his Hanoi Cup momentum, top-ranked Filipino cue artist Johann Chua, meanwhile, poured his heart out for the tournament stretch, eventually capping off with a valiant stand against Spanish star David Alcaide, who escaped with a 5-4 win in the Day 4 opening match.

All in all, it became quickly clear that the first staging of the Reyes Cup was Team Asia’s to lose, as it squeezed out a 3-2 lead in Day 1 before pulling away with a definitive 4-0 match sweep the next day.

The Reyes-captained squad even had organizers scrambling to rearrange their schedule, as it cruised further ahead with a 9-3 lead that prompted the postponement of two Day 3 matches just so Day 4 would have enough matches left to play.

Had Team Europe regained enough momentum from Shaw’s back-to-back wins, it could have essentially forced a maximum of nine Day 4 matches stretching into the wee hours of Saturday morning.

That monumental comeback, however, failed to materialize in the end, and Team Europe now heads back to the drawing board to prepare against Team USA for the year-ending Mosconi Cup in Orlando, Florida. – Rappler.com